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THE HUMAN 



AND ITS 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 



"That we do know." — John hi. 11. 



BY 



THEODOEE F. WEIGHT, Ph.D. 




IZHkjK 



PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B, LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 
1892. 






Copyright, 1892, 

BY 

J. B. Lippincott Company. 



Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia. 



PREFACE. 



When the Master, who was always teaching 
men about their relation to God, said to Kico- 
demus, " We speak that we do know," the words 
may have seemed an overstatement. K his 
auditor had imbibed the scepticism of the later 
academies which taught that there could be no 
conviction, — and this thoughtful teacher of the 
Jews probably knew of the current teaching that 
every sentence must be introduced with a per- 
haps, — he may have deemed the declaration 
naive, as many now view it. 

A recent writer, whose book is a healthful 
combination of theology and common sense, has 
said of the analytic habit that, " While it tends 
to accuracy of reasoning, it too often seems to 
liquefy the mind and incapacitate it for retaining 
the impress of any conviction except that knowl- 
edge is difficult." 1 

1 The Rev. P. H. Steenstra, D.D., in " The Being of God as 
Unity and Trinity." Boston, 1891, page 32. 

8 



4 PREFACE. 

It is probable that every student of philosophy 
has felt something of this aptly termed lique- 
faction of mind, and has found the first effect 
of his reading to be a sense of uncertainty on 
all subjects. In some cases this doubt is per- 
manent and causes one regretfully or disdain- 
fully, as the case may be, to leave to the less 
enlightened the privilege of expressing them- 
selves apodictically. Instructors in philosophy 
have some responsibility here, especially when 
they advise students to adopt that system of 
thought which promotes the easiest life, thus 
instilling at once agnosticism and epicureanism. 

In the following pages I have endeavored to 
solve, by means within the reach of all, the 
problems which present themselves to him who 
seeks to know man and his relation to God, 
hoping thus to be of some use in resisting the 
tendency of studious minds to cast oft faith, and 
in leading them to build on firm foundations 
houses which shall be both sanctuaries and 
fortresses. 

The word of God is frequently referred to, 
but undogmatically, and many writers are cited, 
as will sufficiently appear without giving a list 
of them. No quotations from Swedenborg have 



PREFACE. 5 

been made, because I have written in the spirit 
of his works without consulting them. 

This little treatise would not be added to the 
number of those which already exist in this 
field of inquiry if one of them were known to 
cover the ground here gone over. I have made 
the chapters as brief as possible without leaving 
them obscure; if, however, the third be found 
wearisome, its concluding page will be sufficient 
for the rapid reader's purpose. 

Cambridge, Mass. 



1* 



CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTION. 

PAGE 

Philosophy variously denned ; its change of aim from time 
to time — "Wisdom and the word oo<j>ia, its origin from 
tasting, its first duty to ohey the oracle " Know thy- 
self," why essential in knowledge — Purpose of the 
treatise 11 

CHAPTEK I. 

SELFHOOD. 

Explanation of terms suus,privus, and proprius, their Greek 
equivalents — Ownership an instinct, grounds of its neces- 
sity — Development of the sense of selfhood 17 

CHAPTEK II. 

THE SELF NOT THE FLESH. 

Socrates instructing Alcibiades, the doctrine of the an- 
cients — The self mental and superior to the flesh ... 22 

CHAPTEK III. 

THE SELF OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 

Consciousness defined and its testimony examined — Per- 
sonal identity treated by Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Au- 
gustine, Scholastics, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Wolflf, 
Locke, Butler, Keid, Hume, Berkeley, Tucker, Ham- 
ilton, Voltaire, Condillac, Edwards, Kant, Fichte, Her- 
bart, Schelling, Hegel, Ancillon, Taylor, Cousin, Kos- 

7 



8 CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

mini, Hickok, Schopenhauer, Ulrici, Lotze, Ferrier, 
Mansel, J. S. Mill, Gatien-Arnoult, Spencer, Green, 
Bowen, Hedge, McCosh, Malone, Seth, Olssen, Knight, 
Momerie, and W. James— Criticism of all and sum- 
mary view stated 27 

CHAPTER IV. 

MAN A RECIPIENT. 

Meaning stated — Metempsychosis opposed, its position ex- 
amined in views of Walker, Knight, Schopenhauer, 
Hume, Emerson, and Hedge, weakness of the theory — 
Other forms of life recipient, so with man the microcosm 
unless he be Divine — Testimony of experience — The pro- 
prium, each one's form of reception, more than the 
stream of thought — Each one given a place by this fact 
— Heredity — Necessity of a general plan of human ser- 
vice, ethical value of this altruistic doctrine contrasted 
with that of metempsychosis 100 

CHAPTER V. 

MAN REACTIVE. 

Recipiency must be active or passive, passive with Budd- 
hists, Quietism, Spinozism — Active view defended — 
Not original, but received activity — Illustrated from 
nature and the body, experience of the race and the in- 
dividual — Newman's account of the received life . . . 125 

CHAPTER VI. 

MAN A FREE AGENT. 

Freedom defined, determinism criticised in views of Spi- 
noza, Edwards, Hume, Schopenhauer, Spencer, Bain — 
Affirmative view of "Wundt, its moral value with Kant 134 



CONTENTS. 9 

PAGE 

CHAPTEE VII. 

man's inheritance. 
Not to be doubted, Kibot's statistics vindicated by reason 
— Calvinistic dogma of election destructive of freedom 
and confusing evil with sin — What is transmitted — 
Scientific rejection of freedom criticised, a true education 
leads to control of tbe inheritance 151 

CHAPTEE VIII. 

THE POWERS OF MAN. 

How many primary powers, triple divisions of Hamilton 
and others criticised — Will and understanding treated, 
confirmation of bodily analogy, will as designer, intellect 
as guide, their conjunction in act — Downward rather 
than upward inflow of life, use as the law of right 
activity — Genesis of evil, Spencer's confusion of evil 
with good, purification of self from selfishness .... 163 

CHAPTEE IX. 

THE DIVINE. 

Ancient perception of the Divine — Passage to polytheism, 
in ancient and in Christian history, the effect of degra- 
dation — Arguments for the existence of God examined, 
best of these arguments from man — No original God- 
consciousness, but the Divine inferable from man's 
recipiency, reactivity, and freedom — The creative Divine, 
infinite love, wisdom, and usefulness — The manifestation 
of God in the Christ the only perfect theistic argument 
— Spirit of the Christ, doubts considered, gross concep- 
tions of His work criticised, the Divine personality as 
so shown, agnostic substitutes for Christian faith ex- 



10 CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

amined — The revelation perfect in itself and in its deal- 
ing with evil — No limitation of God as so exhibited, 
Arnold criticised, avoidance of crude anthropomorphism 180 

CHAPTEE X. 

MAN IMMORTAL. 

Not a fact of consciousness, man's knowledge of the Di- 
vine plan in his creation, misconceptions reviewed — Man 
as a spirit co-operative with God, ancient knowledge of 
immortality, the teaching of the Christ, later return to 
physical view — Causes of doubt — Inferences as to the 
future life, death and its effect, the spirit now immortally 
alive, highest possible aim so afforded 205 

CHAPTEE XL 

MAN IN CHRISTIANITY. 

The self in the teaching of the Christ, its recipient reac- 
tivity and freedom, division of man's powers, the design 
of utility, evil in man, man as image of God, man as 
microcosm, advent of the Divine in man, immortality, 
relation of God, spirit, and matter, vital influence, 
miracles , 217 

CHAPTEE XII. 

THE KNOWABLB. 

Need of rational views, criticism displacing dogmatism — 
Man may know spirit in himself, also the body and thus 
matter, also the Christ and thus the Divine — The last 
explained by friendship — God otherwise unknowable, 
example of Mozoomdar, mysticism once despised, 
rational mysticism beneficent — The three knowables in 
their vital relation a unit 254 



INTRODUCTION. 



Definitions of philosophy have varied in a 
marked and significant manner from the begin- 
ning to the present day. Men have been wont 
to define it as the quest of that which at any 
time they most desired. With Pythagoras it 
was the aim of those who sought neither glory 
nor gain, but to observe; with Plato it was a 
resembling of the Deity, so far as that is possible 
to man ; with Aristotle it was the science of 
being; with Bacon it was that part of human 
learning which referred to the reason; with 
Hobbes it was the knowledge of effects by their 
causes; with Leibnitz it was the science of 
sufficient reasons; with Adam Smith it dealt 
with the connecting principles of nature ; with 
Kant it treated of the relations of all knowledge 
to the necessary ends of human reason; with 
Fichte it had the absolute ego for its ground; 
with Schelling it was the science of the absolute; 
with Hamilton it was the study of facts, laws, 
and results ; with Hegel it was the thinking of 

thinking.; with Morell it determined the funda- 

11 



12 INTRODUCTION. 

mental certainty of human knowledge; with 
Lewes it was the explanation of phenomena; 
with Schwegler it was reflection; and with 
Ueberweg and Spencer philosophy is the science 
of principles. 

All these definitions, and many more which 
might be gathered, for every philosophical writer 
has given one, are true, and in a sense equally 
true. They are true if accurately descriptive 
of the facts as historically represented, for these 
men were typical men, and their respective defi- 
nitions of philosophy mark the objects of the 
best thought of their times. Their rational obser- 
vations of that which most interested them, each at 
his own period, constituted their philosophemes. 

If philosophy soared aloft towards the begin- 
ning and end of all things with Pythagoras, 
Socrates called it down from the heavens, as 
Cicero 1 tells us, gave it a place in cities, intro- 
duced it into men's homes, and forced it to make 
inquiry into life and morals. Anon it rose 
again; and so it has gone on, now dogmatic 
then sceptical, now transcendental then scientific, 
all the time an infallible indicator of the progress 

1 Tusculan Disputations, Book V., 4. 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

of the race, a progress which is thereby shown 
to have been unsteady but intensely interesting, 
as it was always intensely earnest. There has 
been more passion in philosophy than its dev- 
otees have acknowledged. 

Aristotle gave the most enduring definition, 
because most free from accidents of time and 
place, when he pointed out that wisdom {ao<pia, 
sapientia) was spoken of the greatest excellence 
in the arts, and also of those men who, not ex- 
celling in one art, were universally superior in 
intelligence ; " thus wisdom/' said he, " is the 
most limited and the most absolute of the 
sciences ; but, since man is the most noble of all 
creatures and wisdom relates to that wherein he 
excels the brutes, therefore wisdom pertains to 
that which is by nature most worthy of honor, 
which is intelligence ; wherefore we call Anaxag- 
oras, Thales, and such men wise." 1 

It would be a profitable study to trace through 
the languages the root from which is formed the 
second half of the word " philosophy," noting its 
kinship with the Greek <ra>^, which means 
" sure," " clear," as applied to knowledge, and 



1 Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI., chap. vii. 
2 



7 



14 INTRODUCTION. 

with the Latin sapio, sapiens, which means first 
" to taste," and so to be a keen taster, to be quick 
in apprehension, to be well informed. The study 
would lead us to the Anglo-Saxon supan, the Ger- 
man saufen, and the English sip and sup. Appar- 
ently, as the child first learns by tasting, putting 
everything to its mouth, so man has used the word 
for tasting, of course made from the sound of 
the lips when taking liquid into the mouth, as 
the name for all knowledge, and supremely for 
that which answers the most fundamental ques- 
tions which from time to time he has been able 
to frame ; for, as Olympiodorus has reported to 
us from Aristotle, " we must philosophize ; if we 
must, we must ; and if we must not, still we 
must." 1 The non-philosophizing man is brutish. 
The animal does not question, does not philos- 
ophize. It is significant that sipping has be- 
come philosophic and has so long been applied 
to the getting of wisdom. In Solomon's day a 
good taste made a wise man. The Proverbs 
said that as honeycomb is sweet to the taste, 
so is the knowledge of wisdom ; 2 and we read 



1 Commentary on Plato's First Alcibiades, Creuzer's edition, 
p. 144. 2 Proverbs, xxiv. 13. 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

in the Psalms, " How sweet are thy words unto 
my taste." l 

Philosophy, it would appear, must not lose 
itself in words, nor mystify the student rather 
than enlighten him, making him agnostic in a 
hopeless way ; it must impel him to seek for that 
which he needs to know in order to rise and to 
raise others, it must impel him to develop what is 
best in man, and thereby to make the most of the 
world, to seek a wisdom which shall be "in him 
a well of water springing up unto eternal life." 2 

The beginning of such wisdom is evidently 
to heed the oracle, " Know thyself," which, Pliny 
says, was inscribed in letters of gold on the 
temple at Delphi by order of Chilo of Sparta, 
one of the seven sages. Unless some clear idea 
of What man is in his own essential self be 
formed, philosophy must wander in the dark- 
ness. All other knowledge, if the self be an 
enigma, is as futile as it is to rule all other 
things but one's own nature. Unless we know 
the self we cannot understand the relation which 
we bear to all else. This is therefore the begin- 
ning of philosophy. "The geometer has lines 

1 Psalm cxix. 103. a John, iv. 14. 



16 INTRODUCTION. 

and figures," said Fichte, " the philosopher only 
himself." l 

No point has been more difficult in philosophy, 
though none was more vital. Some have denied 
the possibility of knowing the self. " The words 
inscribed on the temple at Delphi have been 
oracular in vain," said Ferrier. 2 But this self, 
this " series of faint manifestations," as Spencer 3 
calls it, must be studied, and can be studied if 
man be more than a brute. Cicero says that the 
oracle meant "Know thy soul." 4 We shall 
find out what it meant if we can find out the 
self. In attempting so to do, we may take en- 
couragement from Thomas a Kempis : 6 " An 
humble knowledge of thyself is a surer way to 
God than a deep search after knowledge." And 
Professor Schurman 6 has lately wisely said, "It 
is from its notion of the self, the inevitable centre 
of everybody's world, that every system of phi- 
losophy takes its origin and tone." 

1 Sonnenklarer Bericht, Lecture 4. 

2 Institutes, Prop. vii. 4. 

8 First Principles, 4th ed., p. 154. 
* Tusculan Disputations, I. 22. 
6 Imitatione, Bk. I., ch. iii. 
« Belief in God, p. 222. 



THE HUMAN 

AND ITS 

RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 



CHAPTER I. 

SELFHOOD. 



The distinction between what is one's own and 
what is another's, or between what is one's own 
and what is common property, is everywhere 
made. The Romans, by their words suus, privus, 
proprius, clearly indicated ownership and regard 
to self. It is common to regard privus as ex- 
pressing the idea of one's own, not another's, 
which is to put privus in contrast with alienus, 
and to regard proprius as expressing what is one's 
own, and not common property, which is to put 
proprius in contrast with communis. Again, pecu- 
liaris may be contrasted with universalis, as ex- 
pressive of one's own rights not shared by all. 

Before the Romans the Greeks had the same 
b 2* 17 



18 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

discernment in using oheToq and tdwq in contrast 
with drjfioffioq and xowdq respectively, and Idiot; was 
also contrasted with dUdrptoq. 

It is impossible to think of the universe as 
having any sort of law in it without admitting 
the idea of ownership. Animals know their 
places of rest, their offspring, and their proper 
food. The ox knoweth his owner, and the sheep 
the voice of the shepherd. Were it not so, the 
beasts would not survive a single winter. Men, 
however rude, know and insist that others shall 
recognize their right to the fruits of their hunting 
and their handiwork. Without this sense of 
ownership they would be inferior to the brutes. 
Without this the sense of home could never 
arise. Without this there could be no sense 
of responsibility to serve others with what one 
possessed. Without this there would be no 
nations. The Greeks going to war with Troy 
because Menelaus had lost his own Helen illus- 
trate the general sense of property. Amittit 
merito proprium, qui alienum appetit (" he de- 
servedly loses his own who covets another's"), 
said Phsedrus, the fabulist, and no one has ever 
failed to understand him. 

This recognition of what is one's own is more 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 19 

than the instinct which leads the dog in an 
Oriental city to defend the portion of narrow and 
filthy street which is his district, or which causes 
the bird to utter plaintive cries when her nest of 
little ones is threatened. With the animal it is 
irrational and lacks that full sense of the self 
which enables a man to define it and discuss it, — 
that is, to understand his own nature. 

The infant is at first possessed only of sensa- 
tions of pleasure and pain; when at peace he 
smiles or sleeps, when in pain he cries or writhes ; 
this is only an instinct with him ; but ere long 
he learns to distinguish between himself and 
others, to take an object in his hand and throw 
it from him, rejoicing in the sense of power, and 
so he comes to form some idea of the external 
world. The next step seems to be that of noting 
the connection between one act and another ; he 
shakes the rattle and obtains a sound, he cries 
out and brings the mother to his aid ; it is the 
sense of causality awaking within him. Finally 
he learns to distinguish self and self-interest, to 
make all serve his ends, to know himself as 
different from others, and to see that he has 
thoughts and pleasures of his own. As the self 
thus appears, full humanity is evolved. Before 



20 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

this he was as an animal, he is now an incipient 
man. 

In the development of the race there were no 
men, properly so called, till consciousness of self 
arose; when this arose, there was man, and he 
stood upright, and had dominion over the other 
animals. As soon as self-consciousness appears, 
and not till then, there can be self-determination. 
" One whose action is self-determined is a per- 
son," said Mulford in " The Nation," quoting 
from TJlrici. 1 And Heinroth justly says, "With- 
out consciousness this self would not be I. The 
brute is a self but no I. I was before I became 
an I." 2 Everything in nature acts according to 
laws, is the Kantian idea, man according to con- 
sciousness of laws. 3 

Not yet to plunge into the great subject of 
consciousness, I only remark that the most 
general idea of the self which can be formed is 
up to this point sufficient. It has always been 
recognized since philosophy recorded itself, and 
it is essential to rational humanity. Men philos- 
ophize in the degree that they use their own 
privilege of gaining knowledge, and they cannot 

1 Gott und der Mensch , p. 207. 

8 Psychology, p. 27. 'Kritik, p. 575. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 21 

philosophize till they recognize more than sensa- 
tions of pleasure and pain, more than the exter- 
nality of other beings and things, more than the 
causal connection between acts and events, and 
look upon their own individual natures, in every 
one a suum, a privum, a proprium. The question, 
"What is the self? becomes therefore the question, 
What is one's own solely, and, if he live forever, 
eternally his own ? 



22 THE HUMAN AND ITS 



CHAPTER II. 

THE SELF NOT THE FLESH. 

One further distinction, which was an approach 
to the actual self, was made as the Greeks came 
gradually to see that a line was to be drawn 
between the man and his body. To the Ionic 
School the distinction seems to have been un- 
known. They were natural philosophers. To 
Thales all things, man included, seemed to arise 
from water and to return to it. To Anaximander 
came the somewhat higher view that all essences 
came forth from the " unlimited, eternal, and un- 
determined ground of all things," to which again 
they returned. Anaximenes, however, sought for 
a more definite principle, and found it in air. 

Pythagoras and his disciples distinguished 
their school not only by a rigid moral discipline, 
but by conceiving of an internal harmony con- 
trolling all developments and establishing their 
proportions and relations by the law expressed 
by number. In accepting also the transmigra- 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 23 

tion of the soul the Pythagoreans would seem to 
have distinguished soul from body, and we know 
that they did regard the body as a prison, but 
this idea was one which they had borrowed from 
the East, and it did not enter with them into the 
philosophical teaching for which they are famous. 

"With the Eleatics there is a distinct recogni- 
tion of being as separate from its manifestations. 
Xenophanes declared wisely that being must be 
one, and therefore he condemned the polytheism 
of his day. Parmenides went further, and main- 
tained that the one must be fixed and that 
nothing subject to change could be of it; but he 
also, when treating of the phenomenal world, 
found fire, rather than water or air, to be the 
moving agent. Zeno, as if to reafiirm Par- 
menides , abiding One, developed with much skill 
the antinomies of magnitude and movement, in 
the effort to show that all finite things could be 
dialectically shown to be full of contradictions, 
and so unworthy to be regarded in comparison 
with the infinite and undetermined. 

It is here that one is strongly moved to adopt 
in full the Hegelian idea that philosophy has 
passed through the same stages in the race as in 
the individual. It certainly did begin with mere 



24 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

consciousness and natural notions in the Ionics, 
and did advance to a recognition of being with 
the Eleatics. We now come certainly to the 
one who perfectly illustrates Hegel's next step, 
namely, of becoming (werderi). This is Hera- 
clitus, with his doctrine of the eternal stream of 
life in opposition to the fixedness of Parmenides. 
In the union of greater and less, of centre-seeking 
and centre-fleeing, Heraclitus found unity form 
ing and reforming itself without end. The 
special agent of this movement was fire. 

Not yet, however, had the distinction between 
flesh and spirit fully appeared, and certainly the 
Atomists did not make it, though they evolved 
being per se more fully, as Hegel points out. 
Empedocles, with his four elements, must be 
classed with the Ionics, while Anaxagoras, with 
his doctrine of the world-forming thought (yods), 
leads the way to the point which, later, the 
Sophists reached with their full recognition of 
the ego, joined in their case with contempt for 
the external world. 

But Socrates, by the length of his demonstra- 
tion to Alcibiades, implies that the distinction 
must in his day be taught before it would be 
acknowledged, — 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 25 

S. " Do you not converse with me ?" A. 
"Yes." S. "And I with you?" A. "Yes." 
"It is Socrates who speaks?" "Yes." "And 
Alcibiades who listens?" "Yes." "Is it not 
with language that Socrates speaks?" "Yes." 
" He who uses a thing and the thing used, are 
not these different ?" " Yes." " Then, does not 
a man use his whole body ?" " Yes." " A man 
is therefore different from his body?" "Yes." 
" What then is the man ?" " I cannot say." 
" Does anything use the body but the mind ?" 
" Nothing." " The mind is therefore the man ?" 
"The mind alone." 1 

This, condensed to one-half its length, was 
Socrates' lesson. And Plato had no other 
thought upon this point than his master's. So 
Aristotle said, " The mind is the man." 2 And 
Hierocles, the Neo-Platonist, revived Platonism 
in the words, " Thou art the soul, the body is 
thine." 3 " We are not bodies," said Cicero, in 
his first Tusculan Disputation, " nor am I, while 
saying these things to you, talking to your 
body." 4 " He who is seen is not the real man," 



1 Plato's First Alcibiades, 129. 2 Nic. Ethics, ix. 8. 

3 Aurea Carmina, 26. * I. 22. 

b 3 



26 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

said Macrobius, "but he is the real man by 
whom that which is seen is ruled." 1 Sir "W. 
Hamilton concludes a series of such extracts by 
quoting from Arbuthnot's " Know Thyself," and 
a few of the lines must not be omitted : 

" This frame compacted with transcendent skill, 
Of moving joints obedient to my will, 
Nursed from the fruitful glebe, like yonder tree, 
"Waxes and wastes ; I call it mine, not me. 
New matter still the mouldering mass sustains, 
The mansion changed, the tenant still remains ; 
And from the fleeting stream, repaired by food, 
Distinct, as is the swimmer from the flood." 

This distinction between mind and body rec- 
ognized, we are brought one step nearer to the 
actual self, because we are thereby directed to 
seek for it, not in any part of the body, but in 
that realm which lies above the bodily, which is 
not lessened when a part of the body is ampu- 
tated, and which may and often does endure in 
strength while the body is going to decay. 
When we have admitted that it is mental, we 
have the self in full view. 

1 In Somnium Scipionis, ii. 12. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 27 



CHAPTER III. 

THE SELF OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 

The self, which is not bodily and not cogniza- 
ble by bodily sense, is revealed by that faculty 
which takes note of the mental operations, and 
which is well named consciousness. One not 
only knows and desires, but he knows that he 
knows and desires. He can contemplate his 
own mind and its varying states. This knowl- 
edge of knowledge is the consciousness. As 
Hamilton puts the truth, " Knowing that I know 
is consciousness." 1 And again he says, "Con- 
sciousness is to the philosopher what the Bible 
is to the theologian." 2 " It is like an internal 
light. It is the knowledge which the thinking 
subject has of the modifications of its being." 3 

The question as to the actual self is therefore 
the question, What does the consciousness re- 

1 Metaphysics, Lecture ix. p. 110. 

» Ibid. v. p. 58. 8 Ibid., xi. p. 126. 



28 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

veal ? This question was easily answered while 
men dealt with general views, but when they 
began to employ more and more subtile analyses, 
they came to differ and even to doubt. Conse- 
quently it seems to be necessary to trace the 
study of consciousness from the ancients down, 
proving it all and holding fast what is good. 

The first doubt which was raised was as to 
the connection of conscious moments. At any 
instant one could say, " I am I, I know that I 
am I;" but could he say in the light of con- 
sciousness, " I am the I who was, I am the I who 
knew, who desired ?" This raised the question 
of personal identity and made the study of the 
self turn mainly upon this one point, so that a 
review must deal largely with this topic, before 
one can pass to consider others. 

Aristotle makes it evident that this question of 
personal identity had invaded the Lyceum, for 
he said, " To be of opinion that a thing which 
is changed is not when it changes, possesses 
some truth, but is attended with ambiguity. 
For that which casts away possesses something 
of that which is cast away. Let it be granted 
that a thing does not abide according to quantity, 
yet we know that all things abide as to form. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 29 

To admit no essence takes away the necessary 
subsistence of a thing." x 

Here the Stagirite contends that the change 
which is undergone is not a dissolution, which is 
not a change, but an extinction, and that in that 
which is permanent or which endures the change 
the identity is preserved. If there be nothing 
which endures, nothing exists except for the 
instant, and that which only momentarily exists 
has no subsistence. Every subsisting object, 
whether animate or inanimate, vindicates its self- 
identity. Equally so man. 

Plotinus seems to have regarded the query as 
to identity as already disposed of, for he serenely 
rhapsodizes in Neo-Platonist fashion : " Often 
when by an intellectual energy I am roused from 
the body and converted to myself, and being 
separated from externals, I retire into the depths 
of my essence, I then perceive an admirable 
beauty, and am then vehemently confident that I 
am of a more excellent condition than that of a 
life merely animal and terrene." 2 

This merely repeats the saying put by Plato 
into the mouth of Socrates : " He who knows his 



1 Metaphysics, iv. 5. 2 Descent of Soul, tome iv. 8. 
3* 



30 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

body only, knows that which belongs to him, but 
does not know himself." 1 

In sharp contrast with the rhetoric of Plotinus 
is the eager declaration of Augustine : " I know 
that I am myself, that this I know and love. I 
fear not Academic arguments which say, "What 
if you err ? KI err, I am. Mine error proves 
my being. Though I be one that may err, yet 
in that I know my being I err not." 2 It must 
be acknowledged, however, that Augustine did 
not meet all cavil by his passionate appeal to 
consciousness ; for if his knowledge were but 
that of the instant, it was not sufficient, and he 
was not so successful in his reply to the Academy 
as was Aristotle, 

The Schoolmen, as skilfully reported to us by 
Harper, sought to be more thorough : " Person- 
ality is a substantial mode by which a complete 
intellectual substance is so individually completed 
in its own right that it is incommunicable to any 
other." 3 This is an illogical definition, for a 
" complete intellectual substance" begs the ques- 



1 First Alcibiades. 

2 City of God, Book XI. cb. xxvi. 

3 Metaphysics of the School, Glossary, article Personality. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 31 

tion by giving to the simple notion " personality," 
an attribute " complete," which carries with it all 
that is to be claimed; and the same objection 
might be made to the word " individually." But 
the Schoolmen deserve credit for going some- 
what deeply into the subject when they said, 
"We are supremely conscious that there is 
something within us which links the past, so far 
as memory reaches, to the present in such wise 
as to give us fullest assurance and certainty that 
each one of us, during the whole of that defined 
period, remains personally identical with his own 
self. This consciousness does not forsake us 
even in our dreams. We never dream that we 
are not ourselves. ... Consciousness testifies to 
the existence of a spiritual something which is 
permanent and which is the origin of thought, 
will, and imagination. ... I am aware of phe- 
nomena that are ever changing; of all these I 
am conscious ; yet I am equally conscious that 
the I remains the same through all modifications. 
The phenomena are not essential to my being, 
the I is." 1 

This is admirably clear, though it will be 

1 Metaphysics of the School, voL ii. pp. 405, 406. 



32 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

found that others doubt the alleged fact that we 
are conscious of remaining the same through all 
modifications. Aristotle, with his cautious plea 
that a part remains, is more safe, because he 
claims only what he can hold against all comers. 

Now that we are upon the Schoolmen and 
their authoritative teaching, it may be well to 
note that the Council of Yienne (France), which 
met a.d. 1311, decreed that " whoever henceforth 
shall obstinately presume to assert, defend, or 
hold that the rationaI : or intellectual soul is not 
the form of the human body, of itself and essen- 
tially, is to be accounted for a heretic." This 
was confirmed by Leo X. in the Lateran Council, 
1513, and again by Pius IX. in the Brief called 
Menim, issued June 15, 1857. 1 It is unreasonable 
to depreciate the Schoolmen. Hampered by 
authority to be feared and by authority to be 
preserved they certainly were, and they leaned 
much too heavily upon their Angelical Doctor, 
but they retained much that was good in Greek 
philosophy, and among other things a firm be- 
lief in personal identity. 

"We reach now, however, a new period which 

1 Quoted by Harper, vol. ii. p. 409. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 33 

had its beginning with Descartes, a period when 
little more was claimed than the right to reason, 
and when philosophy looked forward as well as 
backward, to a new structure rather than to the 
adornment of the old. 

Descartes said simply, " I, that is, the mind, 
by which alone I am that I am (sum qui sum), is 
a thing wholly distinct from the body, much 
more easily known than the body, and which 
might clearly be the same that it now is, though 
the body were not existing." 1 This is plain, 
except the last part. It is not self-evident that 
the mind is absolutely independent of the body. 
It may be alert when the body is asleep or 
powerless, but this does not justify the much 
larger assertion that the mind might be the same 
were the body not existing. The mind without 
an organ would be like the vision without an 
eye, it could only potentially exist, and such 
existence can scarcely be called "the same." 

Descartes was more exact when he said, " I 
can doubt whether I have a body, yea, whether 
there be body in the nature of things ; yet it is 
not allowable for me to doubt that I am or exist, 



34 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

so long as I doubt or think." 1 Here he was 
upon the firm ground of his original proposition, 
cogito ergo sum., a ground which future idealism 
would not take from him though scepticism 
might essay to do so. But Descartes in his 
principle was only a pupil of Augustine, with his 
saying, " If I err, I am." Descartes in contrast 
with the Schoolmen is great; measured by a more 
ancient standard, his fame diminishes, except as 
a scientist. 

There is no place in Spinoza's Ethics where 
one can trace the progress of the doctrine of 
self, for he excludes it when he says, " When we 
say that the human mind perceives this or that, 
we say nothing else than that God, not in so far 
as He is infinite, but in so far as He is explained 
by the nature of the human mind, or in so far 
as He constitutes the essence of the human mind, 
has this or that idea." 2 He had already said, 
" The human mind is a part of the infinite in- 
tellect of God." He adds a request to his 
readers to defer their decision as to this declara- 
tion till they have read the whole, but no delay 

1 Meditationes : Objectio Quarta. 

8 Ethics, Smith's Edition, Part II., Prop, xi., Cor. and Schol. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 35 

found Spinoza making man anything more than 
a mirror in which his Creator surveyed His 
perfections. " Let us make man" becomes with 
this pantheistic monist, "Let us make human 
machinery." The system is a superb theocracy, 
but the devout Spinoza left no place in it for 
himself. 

As Descartes repeated Augustine, so Leibnitz 
renewed the saying, already quoted, of Aristotle. 
Leibnitz attempted to go further, but with doubt- 
ful success. He said, " An immaterial being or 
a spirit cannot be stripped of all perception of 
its past existence. It has remaining the impres- 
sions of all that has hitherto come to it, and it 
has also presentiments of that which will come. 
That continuation and connection of perceptions 
makes the same individual a reality, but the 
same apperceptions (perceptions of past feelings) 
prove again a moral identity." ' 

Here, in overstating Aristotle's more cautious 
remark, that a changing thing subsists while 
changing, Leibnitz has gone so far as to say that 
a mind cannot lose its memory, when old age 
affords in every community examples of such 

1 Nouveanx Essais, Lib. II., ch. xxvii. 



36 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

loss, and when disease has often obliterated from 
some mind all recollection of the past. It is true 
that in no case do one's friends fail to note the 
continuance of the personality, but to say that 
this is invariably self-perceived is to exaggerate 
experience. Moreover, it seems wholly unphilo- 
sophical to include as evidences of identity pre- 
sentiments, mere conditional notions of what we 
shall do to-morrow, along with the impressions 
of the past. It would seem impossible to admit 
presentiments to the class of perceptions. 

But, leaving out of account what Leibnitz 
overstated, we find what is of great and perma- 
nent value remaining, namely, the sense of 
identity through the continuation of perceptions, 
and, included therein as an inseparable part, the 
sense of accountability for the past. If Augus- 
tine and Descartes took an ontological view of 
the self, Aristotle and Leibnitz present the em- 
piric view. And every one sees the ethical value 
of the doctrine of personal identity ; for, if this 
be doubted, even so much as by the suave scep- 
ticism of Hume, the result is that moral account- 
ability ceases at once. From Leibnitz forward 
the doctrine is furnished with the defence that it 
is essential to ethics, to accountability, and to 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 37 

capability of improvement ; for, if there be no 
past that is ours, we cannot be instructed by it, 
nor warned by it, nor encouraged by it ; nor can 
the poet's word then be accepted, — 

" Men may rise on stepping-stones 
Of their dead selves to higher things." 1 

Wolff carried the thought no further when he 
said, " The soul is conscious to itself of itself, 
and thus of what is in its act or of its acts. The 
mind may also reflect upon itself and its acts." 2 
This is a mild way of putting the thought that 
the mental self possesses itself and is adapted to 
rule itself. " The mind is its own place," as 
Milton hath it. 

With Locke the subject was taken up by the 
strong empirical British mind, and it took on at 
once a fresh interest. Locke said, "Personal 
identity consists not in the identity of substance, 
but in the identity of consciousness. Conscious- 
ness, as far as ever it can be extended, should it 
be to ages past, unites existences and actions 
very remote in time with the same person. In 

1 Tennyson : In Memoriam, i. 

2 Psych. Emp., Part I., sect. 3, ch. i., n. 261. 



38 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

consciousness alone consists personal identity, — 
that is, the sameness of a rational being. Whilst 
I know by seeing or hearing that there is some 
corporeal being outside of me, the object of that 
sensation, I do more certainly know that there is 
some spiritual being within me that sees and 
hears." x 

The criticism of these statements is so thor- 
oughly made by Butler and Reid, who had been 
stimulated by Hume to use a caution which 
Locke did not suspect to be necessary, that it 
may be well to pass on at once, only stopping to 
point out that, in his desire to avoid the scho- 
lastic appeal to substance because it is not an 
object of perception, Locke made an equally 
serious mistake in ignoring the memory and 
placing the evidence of identity in that conscious- 
ness of identity or " identity of consciousness," 
which is after all the thing to be proved, and 
which is not proved by the assertion that it 
always tells us of an inner spiritual being. We 
may be conscious of such an inner life to-day; 
we sleep and wake to-morrow with the sense of 



1 Essay on Human Mind, Book II., ch. xxiii., sect. 9, and ch. 
xxvii., sect. 15. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 39 

an inner being, but, unless memory comes to our 
aid, these two separated series of moments of 
consciousness will give no perception of the 
identity of those inner beings. 

Deferring our notice of Hume till we have 
brought forward Butler and Eeid as critics of 
Locke and defenders of personal identity against 
Hume, we note Butler's remarks annexed to the 
Analogy, " By reflecting upon that which is my- 
self now and that which was myself twenty 
years ago, I discern that they are not two, but 
one and the same self. Consciousness of per- 
sonal identity presupposes but cannot constitute 
personal identity, any more than knowledge can 
constitute truth which it presupposes. The per- 
son, of whose existence the consciousness is felt 
now and was felt an hour or a year ago, is 
discerned to be, not two persons, but one and 
the same person; and therefore is one and the 
same. . . . If the self or person of to-day and 
that of to-morrow are not the same, but only like 
persons, the person of to-day is really no more in- 
terested in what will befall the person to-morrow 
than in what will befall any other person." 1 

1 Analogy, First Dissertation. 



4Q THE HUMAN AND ITS 

If Butler is justly famous for his Analogy, 
which opened the way to the grand study of the 
correspondence of nature and spirit, he ought 
also to be praised for the fine discernment of 
these remarks. It is true that the deficiences of 
Locke's view and the inadequacy of previous 
definitions of identity had been pointed out, but 
it is certain that Butler freed Locke's statement 
of its weakness and gave one of lasting strength. 
To the suggestion that Butler does not call in 
the memory, a suggestion which may be hastily 
made, it is only necessary to answer that he 
certainly does use the memory, though not by 
name, when he " reflects" upon himself as he is 
and upon himself as he was twenty years before. 

Eeid's 1 criticism of Locke is more severe in 
terms, but not more acute. He notes, of course, 
that Locke made identity to consist in conscious- 
ness alone, and he points out that a defect in 
consciousness, an omission to hold distinctly a 
past experience, would then destroy the identity. 
He declares that there can be no consciousness 
of a past event except through memory, and 
that Locke could not have meant what he said. 

1 Essay III., chap, iii., sect. 3. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 41 

He shows that sense of identity is confounded 
by Locke with evidence of identity. He points 
out that consciousness alone cannot be the evi- 
dence of sameness of the being because it is 
" not any two minutes the same." Moreover, he 
shows that Locke uses the word " same" in a 
way which lays him open to Hume's attack. 
Reid had not a hospitable mind, which made a 
strange doctrine welcome and put the best con- 
struction upon it, but he was justified in dealing 
thus with Locke after Hume had opened fire 
upon the doctrine and had been hailed by some 
as a victorious sceptic. 

But before proceeding to Hume there is a 
most interesting passage to be noticed in Berke- 
ley's " Three Dialogues," in which Hylas, with 
prophetic instinct, though, of course, an imagi- 
nary character, utters a doubt which Philonous, 
who represents Berkeley himself, remedies by 
statements as positive as any realist could 
make: 

"Hylas. It seems to me that, according to 
your own way of thinking, and in consequence 
of your own principles, it should follow that you 
are only a system of floating ideas, without any 

substance to support them. "Words are not to 

4* 



42 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

be used without a meaning ; and as there is no 
more meaning in spiritual substance than in 
material substance, the one ought to be ex- 
ploded as well as the other. 

" Philonous. How often must I repeat that I 
know or am conscious of my own being ; and that 
I myself am not my ideas, but somewhat else, a 
thinking active principle that perceives, knows, 
wills, and operates about ideas. I know that I, 
one and the same self, perceive both colors and 
sounds; that a color cannot perceive a sound, 
nor a sound a color ; that I am therefore one in- 
dividual principle distinct from color and sound, 
and, for the same reason, from all other sensible 
things and inert ideas. But I am not in like 
manner conscious either of the existence or 
essence of matter." 1 

Nothing could be more positive as to the ego 
than this, and nothing could have been said be- 
forehand which would more nearly have met the 
very criticisms which Hume was about to make 
upon Berkeley. It cannot be objected to Berke- 
ley's idealism, as might be urged against later 



1 Works, vol. i. p. 327 et seq. Quoted in Fraser's Selec- 
tions, p. 333. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 43 

idealists, that it infringed upon the identity and 
permanence of the self. 

Hume has a long chapter, one of his liveliest, 
on personal identity. " There are some philoso- 
phers," thus he begins with his usual wave of 
the hand, " who imagine we are every moment 
intimately conscious of what we call ourself ; 
that we feel its existence and its continuance in 
existence ; and are certain, beyond the evidence 
of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity 
and simplicity : no proof can be derived from 
any fact of which we are so intimately conscious ; 
nor is there anything of which we can be certain 
if we doubt of this." * 

Having thus set up his target, not quite fairly, 
for Aristotle and Augustine were not the tran- 
scendentalists which this description implies, 
Hume asserts that we have no separate idea of 
self, but always derive it from some other idea 
of wider content, and that therefore we cannot 
truly say that we know self, indeed that other 
ideas always place themselves in our way when 
we seek to contemplate self. " I never can catch 
myself at any time without a perception, and 

1 Human Nature, Book I., Part IV., sect. 6. 



44 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

never can observe anything but the perception." 
Moreover, the mind is like a theatre which never 
presents twice precisely the same scene; how 
then can we speak of identity ? Again, our idea 
of identity, if we have any, must be like that 
which we have of an animal or a plant, but here 
we can only predicate relation of states, not 
identity of states, for here we have only resem- 
blance. The plant or animal cannot be identi- 
cally the same, for it continually increases or is 
diminished. The change may be so gradual 
that we do not note it, but to use the word 
" identical" of it is only to disclose our lack of 
observation. A reference is made to Jason's 
ship. Men say that two sounds, separated by an 
interval of time, are the same, that two churches 
which have been erected in succession upon the 
same lot or under the same name are the same, 
and so on ; but they do not mean it, any more 
than they mean the same river when its waters 
are always changing. " The identity which we 
ascribe to man is a fictitious one and of a like 
kind with that which we ascribe to vegetables 
and animal bodies. It proceeds from a like 
operation of the imagination. ,, Taking up the 
subject afresh, Hume then proceeds to hold that 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 45 

resemblance, contiguity, and the succession of 
states or events which is called causation, are 
really all there is of identity. Memory merely 
declares the resemblance between our past and 
present selves. Causation is only a name for 
successive experiences, the actual connection of 
which no one can prove. And memory is too 
defective to be evidence of identity. "."Who can 
remember his thoughts and actions January 1, 
1715, or March 11, 1719 V 91 The doctrine of 
identity, in fine, rests on verbal grounds alone, 
on words which have been shown to be used 
inaccurately. 

Hume does not deny the self; he says, " Our- 
self is intimately present ;" 2 he only denies the 
alleged grounds of the doctrine of the identity 
of self. Exactly what he holds and denies we 
should have been better able to say if he had 
not written a strange note beginning, " Upon a 
more strict review of the section concerning per- 
sonal identity, I find myself involved in such a 
labyrinth that I must confess I neither know 
how to correct my former opinions, nor how to 



1 Human Nature, Book I., Part IV., sect. 6. 

2 Ibid., Book II., Part III., sect. 7. 



46 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

render them consistent." He then repeats in 
briefer sentences his former doubts, but closes 
with the confession that the difficulty of obtain- 
ing a perception of a permanent self may be in 
his own mind. 1 

This shows Hume rather in the light of a sin- 
cere doubter, endeavoring to be a true Cartesian, 
than in that of an incorrigible sceptic, and yet 
the necessity of considering his objections is not 
diminished by his apologetic note. He is most 
thoroughly replied to in a little, almost unknown, 
book, entitled " Man in Quest of Himself," by 
Abraham Tucker, London, 1763, the only book 
but one which is known to deal exclusively with 
this subject. He also wrote under the name of 
"Edward Search." His little treatise may be 
summarized thus : 

"While replying to an assault on the individ- 
uality of the human mind or self, made by Cuth- 
bert Comment, in the Monthly Review, Tucker 
attempts to reply to all real and possible ob- 
jectors by taking up a long line of argument. 
The word " same," he remarks, is used vaguely 
enough, as when one glass of wine is called the 

1 Appendix, edition of Selby-Bigge, Oxford, 1888, p. 633-6. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 47 

same as another if filled from the same bottle ; 
but this is a mere statement of likeness, and 
should not be confused with " specific identity." 
So a man changes and does not remain the same 
as to " flesh, blood, bones, and humours." But 
man is a substance, his qualities are not qualities 
of nothing; and, when thought of apart from 
the qualities of his active life, as in sleep, he is 
thought of as to substance. Qualities may and 
do change. The same clay may be moulded 
into various successive forms. The same water 
may be now hot, then cold. But man, clay, and 
water continue in existence. Moreover, every 
man is an individual ; he may be composed of 
parts, but is their perfect sum. They may un- 
dergo some change, as the men of a regiment 
may change, but the Guards remain the Guards, 
and the man remains himself. Were a man not 
an individual he would not be a first entity, and 
he might be reincorporated into other forms. A 
man's personality is the sum of his qualities. 
His personality is not a separate thing as the 
dozen is not separate from its twelve compo- 
nents, itself a thirteenth ; and the personality is 
the sum of the real qualities. In sleep we lay 
down some qualities for a time and then resume 



48 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

them, retaining all the time our identity; so 
may it be in death. Tucker goes into a skil- 
fully-constructed catechism to show the ab- 
surdity of making the self anything but an 
individuality. He does not call the mind the 
man himself, for this undergoes changes; he 
postulates an unchanging substance. 

It does not appear whether or not Mr. Com- 
ment was forever silenced by this reply. He 
might have suggested that, in taking refuge in a 
substance and in surrendering even the identity 
of mind, Mr. Tucker had voluntarily yielded his 
case, and that the identity ought to be something 
more than an inference, which Hume at once 
would call a fiction. The dozen example is not 
bad, but the trouble with it is that personality, 
if exhibited thus, seems but a name. On the 
whole the clay example is much to be preferred. 

Sir W. Hamilton met Hume more acutely by 
charging him with making the ego only a bundle 
of impressions and ideas, while he, Hamilton, 
asserted, " As clearly as I am conscious of exist- 
ing, so clearly am I conscious at every moment 
of my existence, that the conscious ego is not 
itself a mere modification, nor a series of modi- 
fications of any other subject, but that it is itself 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 49 

something different from all its modifications 
and a self-existent entity." l He does not try to 
explain this fact, to go below it and account for 
it. No one, he truly says, doubts this deliver- 
ance of consciousness, though Hume doubted its 
truth. Hume, he asserts, argued against the ill- 
formed premises of the dogmatic philosophers, 
and is refuted by the correction of those premises. 
He commends what Locke, Leibnitz, Butler, and 
Reid had said of the immorality of the doubt of 
personal and moral identity. Hamilton must be 
referred to again when the view of Kant is con- 
sidered, for he joins Kant with Hume just here. 
Deferring further mention of Hamilton for the 
present till he is reached in the order of time, we 
may go back to the eighteenth century and note 
Voltaire's sceptical saying, " It would be a fine 
thing to see one's soul. ' Know thyself is an excel- 
lent rule, but it is for God only to put it in prac- 
tice ; who but He can know his own essence ?" 2 
Condillac is more philosophical if less epigram- 
matic : " The self of every man is only the collec- 
tion of sensations which he experiences and of 



1 Lectures on Metaphysics, xix. 

2 Dictionnaire philosophique, Ame. 
d 5 



50 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

those which his memory reports to him ; that is 
all, — the consciousness of what he is and the 
recollection of what he has been." l This, of 
course, stands or falls with Hume and is to be 
judged by its fruits. If Condillac be right, the 
self is a fiction indeed, and moral responsibility 
a ghost. 

Everything that Jonathan Edwards wrote 
comes to us with the weight of a great name, 
but it would appear that here Edwards was not 
in vision. Perhaps he too much approached 
Spinoza in his form of mind to give man his 
true place. He said, with conspicuous caution, 
" We find a great deal of difficulty in conceiving 
exactly of the nature of our own souls. And, 
notwithstanding all the progress which has been 
made in past and present ages, yet there is still 
work enough left for future inquiries and re- 
searches, and room for progress still to be made 
for many ages and generations." 2 

He did not know how soon new light would 
shine. When he published these words, in 1754, 
Immanuel Kant was preparing his first course of 



1 Traite des Sensations, quoted by Ueberweg, vol. ii. p. 127. 

2 Treatise on the Will, Part IV., sect. 7. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 51 

lectures. Taking his starting-point with Hume, 
but proceeding in a much more thorough and 
convincing way, Kant was, as regards much that 
he found in philosophy, wholly sceptical, but he 
was also constructive and positive. What do we 
possess through pure reason? was his question 
in the Kritik, We have sense, and we have 
thought; what do we gain thereby? In sense 
we have, as & priori conditions of all perception, 
space and time. Under these and other relations 
we know. Our objects are the phenomena of 
experience, not noumena. We think under 
twelve categories, which are explained. Judg- 
ments based on experience directly are a posteriori; 
those absolutely made universal are a priori 
Having dwelt at length upon these points, in- 
cluding also a treatment of synthetic and analytic 
judgments, Kant proceeded to free the pure 
reason from psychological accretions. " The 
transcendental doctrine of the soul is falsely 
held to be a science of pure reason, touching the 
nature of our thinking being. We can lay at 
the foundation of this science nothing but the 
simple and perfectly contentless representation I, 
which cannot even be called a conception, but 
merely a consciousness which accompanies all 



52 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

conceptions. By this I, or He, or It, who or 
which thinks, nothing more is represented than 
a transcendental subject of thought = x, which 
is known only by means of the thoughts that 
are its predicates, and of which, apart from 
these, we cannot form the least conception. 
Hence we are obliged to go round this repre- 
sentation in a perpetual circle. 1 All the modes 
of self-consciousness in thought are hence not 
conceptions of objects (categories); they are 
mere logical functions which do not present 
to thought an object to be cognized, and there- 
fore cannot present my self as an object. . . . 
(1) In all judgments I am the determining 
subject of that relation which constitutes a judg- 
ment; . . . but this does not signify that I, as 
an object, am for myself a self-subsistent being 
or substance. 2 ... (2) The I of apperception is 
a single one and cannot be resolved into a plu- 
rality of subjects ; . . . but this is not to declare 
that the thinking I is a simple substance. . . . 
(3) The proposition of the identity of my self, 
amid all the representations of which I am con- 



1 Kritik der Keinen Vernunft, Theil II., Abth. II., Buch 
II. , p. 404. 3 Ibid., p. 408. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 53 

scious, lies in the conceptions themselves ; . . . 
but this identity is not the same as the perception 
of the subject, whereby it is presented as object, 
and therefore this proposition cannot declare the 
identity of the person, by which is meant the 
consciousness of the identity of its own substance 
as a thinking being in all change of circum- 
stances. ... (4) I distinguish my own existence 
as one thinking being from other things external 
to me, among them my body ; . . . but whether 
this consciousness of myself is possible without 
things external, . . . and whether I can exist 
merely as a thinking being (without being man), 
I cannot know from this." 1 

The four paralogisms and their corrections, 
condensed as much as possible, are given in the 
last four sentences. The whole idea is stated by 
Kant thus : " The unity of consciousness which 
lies at the basis of the categoris, is considered to 
be a perception of the subject as object, and the 
category of substance is applied to the subject. 
But this unity is nothing more than the unity in 
thought, by which no object is given ; to which 

1 Kritik der Eeinen Vernunft, Theil II., Abth. II., Buch 
II., p. 408. 

5* 



54 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

therefore the category of substance, which always 
presupposes a given perception, cannot be applied. 
Consequently the subject cannot be known." 1 

So far as Kant was here aiming to show against 
Knutzen, M. Mendelssohn, and others, the fallacy 
of grounding belief in immortality upon the 
soul as a substance, it is not to the present pur- 
pose to deal with him. This was his main ob- 
ject in this chapter, but incidentally he sought 
to show that we know the self only as subject 
and never as predicate or object. 

Hamilton's answer to this is that Kant makes 
the selfless substantial than consciousness makes 
it, and that thus to reduce it is to discredit con- 
sciousness, — a proceeding which stops all phi- 
losophizing at once. " In disputing the testimony 
of consciousness to our mental unity and sub- 
stantiality, Kant disputes the possibility of phi- 
losophy, and, consequently, reduces his own at- 
tempts at philosophizing to an absurdity." 2 

This is scarcely just. Kant is not seeking to 
do away with the self, thus denying a part of 
every thought he has and despising conscious- 

1 Kritik der Keinen Vernunft, Theil II., Abth. II., Buch 
II., p. 422. 2 Metaphysics, Lecture XIX. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 55 

ness as a guide ; he is only seeking to make self 
an apperception rather than a judgment. He 
cannot be so rash, skilled introspectionist as he 
was, as to deny the possibility of thorough self- 
contemplation, of a train of thought which 
would end in the sentence, " Such a being, with 
such a history, such purposes, such powers, is the 
being called I by my self, by my name by others." 

Mahany seeks to be just to Kant when he 
says, "Are you conscious of being presented 
with yourself as a substance ? Or are you con- 
scious that in every act of thought you must 
presuppose a permanent self, and always refer it 
to self, while still that self you cannot grasp, and 
it remains a hidden basis upon which you erect 
the structure of your thoughts ? Kant's view, 
the latter, is the simpler and the more consistent 
with the ordinary language." ■ 

It is enough to say to this that this is going 
beyond Kant, who did not make the I a hidden 
thing, but a " consciousness accompanying all 
conceptions." In appealing to " ordinary lan- 
guage," again, Mahaffy is wholly unwise, for 
that appeal is to ignorance, to Alcibiades before 

1 Kant's Critical Philosophy for English Eeaders, lvi. 



56 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

he had had his conversation with Socrates, to one 
who has not heeded the oracle, " Know thyself." 
To vindicate Kant from friendly or unfriendly 
misrepresentation we must briefly remark upon 
his doctrine of the self as it appears in his 
" Original Synthetic Unity of Apperception. " 
He there presents in vivid contrast the merely 
empirical self of the passing moment and the 
original and permanent and transcendental self, 
and declares : " The empirical consciousness, 
which accompanies each determination as it 
arises, is in itself broken up into units, and is 
unrelated to the one identical subject. Relation 
to a single subject does not take place when I 
accompany each determination with conscious- 
ness, but only when I add one determination to 
another, and am conscious of this act of synthesis. 
It is only because I am capable of combining in 
one consciousness the various determinations 
presented to me that I can become aware that 
in every one of them the consciousness is the 
same. It is only because I can grasp the various 
determinations in one consciousness that I can 
call them all mine ; were it not so, I should have 
a self as many-colored and various as the sepa- 
rate determinations of which I am conscious. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 57 

Synthetic unity of the various determinations is 
therefore the ground of that identity of apper- 
ception which precedes d, priori every definite 
act of thought. . . . The unity of apperception 
is therefore the supreme principle of all our 
knowledge." * 

By presenting this transcendental synthetic 
conception of the self as combining subject 
Kant seems to separate himself from Hume by 
the whole breadth of this conception, while in 
his description of the empirical self he agrees 
with Hume and covers all that Hume had to say 
of the self. It is clear that Kant is a firm be- 
liever in personal identity, and must be counted 
on the side of those who affirm the positive, sub- 
stantial existence of the individual self, and can- 
not be set down as positing only the mere "T 
think" of passing experience. Only Kant rightly 
declares that some have gone too far in holding 
that in thinking we know the self independently 
as an object. 

Fichte, so modifying or rather transcending 
Kant's view as to exclude the dualism of phe- 
nomena and noumena, presented the self as ab- 

1 Kritik, Theil II., Abth. I., Buch I., pp. 183-135. 



58 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

solute, but manifesting itself in consciousness as 
knowing subject and known object: "The I is 
this, the subject-objectivity, and nothing else 
whatever ; the positing of the subjective and its 
objective, of the consciousness and its known as 
one ; and absolutely nothing else outside of this 
identity." l 

Of this doctrine Dr. McCosh says that Fichte 
did for Kant what Berkeley did for Locke. He 
charges Fichte with denying any self but a phe- 
nomenon, and argues that a phenomenon, al- 
though but an appearance, is an appearance of 
something exhibiting some of its qualities. So 
with the self, " We perceive qualities of self, of 
self in such and such a state." 2 Dr. McCosh is 
too hasty, in conclusion, to do Fichte justice. 

Herbart engages with the question as treated 
by Kant and Fichte : " "What we observe in our- 
selves is, taken generally, a very great variety 
of our thoughts and mental states, a continual 
becoming and changing. Over against these ap- 
pears the I, which is always present there, to 
form a fixed point. ... Of the reality of this I 

1 Sonnenklarer Bericht, edition 1801, p. 86. 
'Cognitive Powers, Book I., chap. ii. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 59 

we have so strong and immediate a conviction 
that it has become a form of oath to establish all 
other knowledge and conviction, ' As true as I 
am.' . . . What does self-consciousness declare ? 
The I declares itself, that is, its I, that is, its self- 
declaration. If the inquiries for the ego, the 
opening of which is here suggested, be properly 
carried on, the entrance will show itself in spec- 
ulative psychology. After Kant and Fichte phi- 
losophers must go this way." l 

In thus pointing out that the Kantian criticism 
had opened a new way which would be much 
more prolific in result than the old, Herbart was 
surely right. In his strictures upon Fichte he is 
skilfully summarized in Dr. C. C. Everett's ex- 
position of "Fichte's Science of Knowledge." 2 
The result is the vindication of self-consciousness 
as positing the I in distinction from all else, " In 
its highest form it is self-affirmation, which is 
the one fundamental and absolute affirmation." 3 

Schelling, denying the absolutely egoistic point 
of view of Fichte, and gradually coming into 
direct opposition in mysticism, held that "the 



1 Lehrbuch zur Einleitung, I. B. 2, IV. I. 124. 

2 Chicago, 1844, pp. 81-87. s Ibid., p. 89. 



60 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

I can be conscious of itself only in contrast with 
a not-self. At the same time this not-self or 
limit is laid down by itself and is recognized as 
its own. The I is therefore a perpetual process 
of laying down and removing a limit." 1 . . . 
" There is an immediate consciousness of the 
self as distinct from and contrasted with an 
outer object" 2 " The question whether the I of 
self-consciousness is a thing in itself or a phe- 
nomenon is utterly meaningless. To speak of 
the I as a thing in itself is to suppose that the I 
exists otherwise than for itself, which is as ab- 
surd as to suppose that the I exists before it 
exists." 3 

This was a transition from Kant to Hegel, and 
in the latter's view the extreme idealistic position 
was fully exhibited. 

Hegel, in his "Philosophy of History," said 
simply, " Two things must be distinguished in 
consciousness: first, that I know; secondly, 
what I know. In self-consciousness they are 
merged in one ; for spirit knows itself." 4 Here 



1 Schelling's Transcendental Idealism summarized by "Wat- 
son, Chicago, 1882, p. 111. 2 Ibid., p. 127. 
3 Ibid., p. 110. * Introduction. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. §\ 

he has set consciousness over against self-con- 
sciousness, and has presented his habitual notion 
that consciousness, in which the subject and the 
object stand over against each other, is but a 
step to self-consciousness in which a synthesis 
takes place and the mind contemplates itself as 
knowing. In another place, which Hegel reached 
in the course of a full examination of his cate- 
gories, he said, " One has not the least idea of 
the I nor of anything, even of the idea itself, so 
far as he does not comprehend anything and re- 
mains standing only by the simple, fixed percep- 
tion and name. It is a singular thought, if it 
can be named a thought, that I must myself 
make use of the I in order to judge of the I. 
The I, which makes use of the self-consciousness 
as a means of judging, is indeed an x of which 
one, as to the relation of such usage, can have 
not the least idea. ... A stone has not this 
awkwardness. If it is to be thought or judged 
upon, it does not stand in its own way. It is 
freed from the inconvenience of making use of 
itself for this purpose; another, outside of it, 
must do the thinking." 1 



1 Logik, Werke V., p. 257. 
6 



62 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

It is difficult to make an extract, either from 
the " Logic" or from the " Phenomenology, " 
which will clearly show how Hegel regarded the 
ego, for he is discussing only the process of 
thinking, and thus he presupposes the ego all the 
way, though at first the object, the "this," is 
prominent, and therefore mere consciousness 
precedes what may more properly be called self- 
consciousness. The selbst may be said to be in 
Hegel's hands a substance which undergoes a 
constant clarifying. He is affirmative in regard 
to personal identity and the selfhood, and in 
his Nuremberg Outline thus sums up the case : 
" The content of reason is for the ego no alien 
somewhat, nothing given from without, but 
throughout penetrated and assimilated by the 
ego and therefore to all intents produced by the 
ego." 1 Dr. "W. T. Harris expresses it thus: 
" Looking closely at his treatment of idea, we 
discover plain evidence sufficient to convince us 
that he has in his thoughts always a personal 
first principle as the necessary result of his 
system. We see well enough that his talk about 



1 Journal of Speculative Philosophy for August, 1869, p. 
174. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 63 

method and dialectic treatment is meant merely 
for a statement of the nature of this highest 
personal self-activity." l 

Passing now to such English, French, German, 
Italian, and American philosophers as it has 
seemed well to consult in addition, I note Sir 
"W. Hamilton's remark : " The I is manifested 
only in one or the other of these modes [of per- 
ception, feeling, memory, and so forth]; but it 
is manifested in them all ; they are all only phe- 
nomena of the I. The self, the I, is recognized 
in every act of intelligence, as the subject to 
which that act belongs." 2 

Closely affiliated with this perfect faith in 
consciousness, which no criticism could shake, 
stands the view of J. J. F. Ancillon, a French 
resident of Berlin, who sympathized with Jacobi 
rather than with Kant. He said, " The con- 
sciousness or ego is the impenetrability of souls. 
... If the consciousness of ourselves or of the 
ego be not an immediate revelation of the re- 
ality of our own existence, and if the con- 
sciousness of other existences be not given us 

1 Hegel's Logic, Chicago, 1891, p. 392. 

2 Metaphysics, Lecture IX., p. 116. 



64 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

in the ego, we can never attain to a real ex- 
istence. . . . Consciousness gives us the reality 
of our own existence and therein the reality 
of infinite being. The soul is given us in 
and by the consciousness which we have of 
ourselves. It is us, and we are it. The ego 
forces us to believe in the universe and in our- 
selves ; and if we doubt it, we believe absolutely 
nothing." x 

This last is not too strongly stated, as may 
sufficiently appear from Kant's rejection of such 
belief as objectively founded or constitutive, and 
his reinstating it as regulative or practically val- 
uable. It is right to act, he held, as if there 
were a soul. It is not important to ascertain, it 
is impossible to know, whether God be in one 
person, or three, or ten; it is enough if we 
accept the number which will give the right rule 
of conduct. And so on, almost as if one could 
be voluntarily self-deceived. Ancillon was on 
firm ground here, and made his statement in 
another way which seems worthy of quotation : 
" The reflective ego distinguishes self from its 

1 La Science et la Foi Philosophique, Paris, 1830, pp. 101, 
136, 163. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 65 

modifications and separates spectator from spec- 
tacle." l 

It may be well also to hear from Thomas Tay- 
lor, although he was only introducing Plotinus 
as the reproducer of Plato : " Prior both to 
reason and the one life is the one of the soul, 
which says, I perceive, I desire; which fol- 
lows all these energies and energizes together 
with them ; for we should not be able to know 
all these and to apprehend in what they differ 
from each other, unless we contained a certain 
indivisible nature, which subsists above com- 
mon sense, and which, prior to all opinion, 
desire, and will, knows all that these know 
and desire, according to an indivisible mode of 
apprehension." 2 

In contrast with this antique and dogmatic 
style is the remarkably perspicuous Cousin : " In 
every act of consciousness there is the conscious- 
ness of some operation, phenomenon, thought, 
volition, or sensation ; and at the same time the 
conception of our existence. And when memory, 
following consciousness, comes into existence, the 



1 Nouveaux Melanges, ii. p. 103. 

2 Introduction to Plotinus, London, 1794. 

6* 



QQ THE HUMAN AND ITS 

phenomena which just before were under the eye 
of consciousness, fall under that of memory, with 
the implicit conviction that the same being, the 
same I myself, who was the subject of the phe- 
nomena of which I was conscious, still exists and 
is the same whom my memory recalls to me. . . . 
In the order of nature and reason, consciousness 
and memory involve the supposition of personal 
identity. In chronological order some act of 
memory and of consciousness is the condition 
of the conception of our identity. . . . The 
condition of consciousness is attention, and that 
of attention is the will. It is the continuity of 
the will, attested by memory, which gives the 
conviction of personal identity." } 

Cousin proceeds to criticise Locke's meagre 
definition that " consciousness alone makes self," 
and declares that the self is known in the opera- 
tions which manifest it, that identity is the con- 
viction of reason. He adds : "Personal identity 
is the union of your being, yourself, opposed to 
the plurality of consciousness and memory. It 
is impossible to know phenomena of sensation, 
volition and intelligence, without instantly refer- 

1 Criticism of Locke, Hartford, 1834, pp. 70, 73. 



RELATION TO TEE DIVINE. 67 

ring them to a subject one and identical, which 
is self, the I." 1 

Cousin seems to go too far in this criticism of 
Locke ; for, if we admit with him that the self 
does not fall under consciousness and memory, 
but only the operations in which the self is en- 
gaged, we are precluded from making the per- 
fectly rational statement, " I am." Indeed, we 
should not find difficulty in criticising Cousin 
by his own words. 

In the works of the Italian Rosmini, whose 
system has been conveniently set forth, largely 
in the author's words, by Thomas Davidson, who 
compared his influence upon the thought of 
Italy to that of Aristotle and Kant, may be found 
clear statements as to the selfhood: "When I 
think, myself, I, the subject, become the object 
of my own thought. . . . The human soul is a 
single substantial subject. 2 . . . The ego is an 
active principle in a given nature, in so far as it 
has consciousness of itself and pronounces the 
act of consciousness. In order to be self-con- 
scious, that is, to be an ego, the subject must 



1 Criticism of Locke, p. 259. 

3 Rosmini's Philosophical System, London, 1882, pp. 63, 118. 



68 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

have combined the feeling of selfhood [we de- 
cline to adopt Mr. Davidson's meity for the Italian 
meita] with ideal being as intuited, and then, by 
reflection, must have analyzed the object thus 
formed into the judgment, * Myself is.' But 
this self is precisely what we mean by ego. . . . 
The identity of principles in different reflections 
arises from the inner feeling, — that is, from the 
feeling which man has of his own universal 
activity, wherein • are virtually contained and 
identified all partial activities, and wherein it is 
felt that that act which gives rise to perception 
and reasoning is nothing other than an act, a 
partial application of that first fundamental 
activity, from which likewise proceeds reflection 
upon that which is perceived and reasoned about, 
upon perceptions, upon reasonings, upon the re- 
flections themselves, and that this activity is the 
very one which speaks and which posits itself 
by saying ' L' Thus is generated the ego." 1 

Hickok views the subject similarly : " Some- 
thing is while the varied exercises successively 
come and go upon the field of human conscious- 
ness. What that something is, the conscious- 

1 Rosmini's Philosophical System, London, 1882, pp. 202, 217. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 69 

ness does not reveal ; but that it permanently is, 
in its unchanged identity, the consciousness does 
testify. It is as if the mirror could feel itself 
and its repeated throes of reflection, while it can 
by no means envisage itself, but only that which 
stands before it." 1 

This is the same as to say that consciousness 
is a mere mirror. If it were such, the existence 
of a self would indeed be but a reflection from a 
passive consciousness, but the mirror is at least 
so full of life that it can turn a hundred ways, 
and can itself make up the composite image, in- 
cluding all the reflections. Nay, more, aided by 
the judgment and memory, it can say, " Thou 
art the man," and can bid him repent, or suffer 
the reward of his deeds. 

Schopenhauer, with his hand against every 
man and his mind as inhospitable as possible 
towards other men's views, was acute and bril- 
liant in thought and speech. His word is, " All 
knowledge presupposes subject and object. Self- 
consciousness knows only will, not knowledge. 
The ego is as described by the Upanishad : ' It 
is not seen, yet sees all things ; it is not heard, 

1 Empirical Psychology, Schenectady, 1854, p. 75. 



70 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

yet bears all things; it is not known, yet knows 
all things ; it is not understood, yet understands 
all things.' There can be no knowledge of 
knowing. 'I know that I know' means only 
that I know, and this nothing more than I. The 
subject of knowledge can never be known, it can 
never become object. . . . The identity of the 
willing with the knowing subject, in virtue of 
which the word ' I' designates both, is the nodus 
of the universe (Weltknoten), and therefore in- 
explicable." 1 

The answer to this would best be made by one 
who was learning with interest something which 
he had not previously known. The will to know 
would come first, and then the use of knowledge 
acquired would follow, and then he might look 
upon himself and say, " You, who were ignorant 
of this language, can now speak it ; be thankful." 
It is needless to analyze Schopenhauer's obstinate 
negations. 

How different the spirit of Ulrici: "By 
strength of his self-consciousness, his higher 
spontaneity and his thorough individuality, not 
only is the man himself in general but the single 

1 Fourfold Koot of Sufficient Reason, sect. 42. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 71 

individual in an eminent sense a subject, a self. 
Through the fact of self-distinction he affirms 
and knows himself as self; through the will he 
actuates and maintains himself as self." * 

These are weighty words which might be en- 
larged upon, but they are passed over with the 
single remark that they will repay one for the 
closest examination. 

Lotze does not go quite so far : " Self-con- 
sciousness is not an innate endowment of the 
mind so that from the first we see mirrored be- 
fore us what we ourselves are. Our conscious- 
ness never presents to us this image as found; 
we are merely directed to a more or less obscure 
point in which lies our ego. . . . Self-conscious- 
ness is to us but as the interpretation of a sense 
of self. With culture the content of the ego 
becomes clearer, and extends over an enlarging 
circumference." 2 

It is, of course, of this cultured self-conscious- 
ness, this mature mind obedient to the oracle, 
"Know thyself," that we ought to think; and 
that Lotze abates nothing from the objective 

1 G-ott und der Mensch, Leipzig, 1873, p. 30. 

2 Microcosm os, Book II., chap, v., sect. 3. 



72 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

reality of this may be seen from his words : 
" Among all the errors of the human mind it 
has always seemed to me the strangest that it 
could come to doubt its own existence, of which 
alone it has direct experience, or to take it at 
second hand as the product of our external 
nature which we know only indirectly, only by 
means of the knowledge of the very mind to 
which we would fain deny existence." 1 And 
still more emphatically he says, "Mortality 
reaches its highest stage in self-consciousness. 
. . . Self-consciousness sets itself as ego in op- 
position to the non-ego." 2 

When in a passage we meet with an apparent 
contradiction of this, and Lotze is found speaking 
of the self as " never rising into complete self- 
consciousness," 3 it seems to be his reverence for 
man leading him to attribute to him an infinite 
depth transcending the plummet of self-con- 
sciousness. There is no harm in this, provided 
it is agreed that we can know and measure and 
judge the agent of our own acts. 

Ferrier has some emphatic sentences : " Self 



1 Microcosmos, Book II., chap, v., sect. 6. 

2 Ibid., Book IX., chap. iv. 3 Ibid., chap. iv. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 73 

is the ens unum, the semper cognitum in omnibus 
notitiis. It is the centre in which all cognitions 
meet and agree. . . . No cognition in which 
one does not apprehend one's self is possible. . . . 
The ego comes before us along with whatever 
comes before us. . . . "When I observe a book I 
also observe myself. . . . There can be no knowl- 
edge of self or ego in a purely indeterminate 
state. The ego can know itself only in connec- 
tion with some non-ego. . . . Hume says that 
he catches his perceptions without any self; in 
other words, he finds that they do not belong to 
any one. . . . The essence of the mind is the 
knowledge which it has of itself with that 
which it is cognizant of." 1 

The expression ens unum seems too strong for 
Ferrier's purpose, and we note that his last sen- 
tence ignores the will ; but his criticism of Hume 
shows that he means to be counted among the 
supporters of personality as actual, discernible, 
and permanent. 

It suited the purpose of Dean Mansel to 
note the limits of personality, but he affirm- 
atively said, " Personality is a limitation, for 

1 Institutes of Metaphysics, Propositions I., II., VII., IX. 
d 7 



74 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

the thought and the thinker limit each other. 
If I am any one of my own thoughts, I live 
and die with each successive moment of my 
own consciousness. If I am not any one of my 
own thoughts, I am limited hy that very differ- 
ence." This is clear, and he goes further in the 
direction of definition of the self when he says, 
" That which I see, or hear, or think, or feel 
changes and passes away with each moment of 
my varied existence* I who see, hear, think, 
and feel am one continuous self, whose existence 
gives unity and connection to the whole." l He 
also holds that we are conscious of our selves as 
depending upon another Person. 

In his note to his father's "Phenomena of 
Mind," J. S. Mill has expressed himself with 
great vigor: " Suppose a being gifted with sensa- 
tion, but devoid of memory; whose sensations 
follow after one another, but leave no trace of 
their existence when they cease. Could this 
being have any knowledge or notion of a self? 
"Would he ever say to himself, ' I feel ; this sensa- 
tion is mine V I think not. The notion of a 



1 Limits of Religious Thought, Lecture III., pp. 103, 105; 
iv. p. 130. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 75 

self is, I apprehend, a consequence of memory. 
There is no meaning in the word ego or I unless 
the I of to-day is also the I of yesterday." l 

This is somewhat too strong. It is true that 
the notion of the self depends on memory, but 
it is not so true that it depends on memory 
alone; for an aged person, whose memory is 
gone, as the saying is, still retains in momentary 
self-consciousness a distinct idea of self, and every 
new sensation renews the thought of self. In- 
deed, Mill says for himself that " there is a men- 
tal process over and above the having a mere 
feeling, to which the word consciousness is 
sometimes, and it can hardly be said improperly, 
applied, namely the reference of the feeling to 
our self." 2 

But in another place, having mentioned a suc- 
cession of feelings, he said, " This succession of 
feelings, which I call my memory of the past, is 
that by which I distinguish myself. Myself is 
the person who had that series of feelings, and I 
know nothing of myself by direct knowledge 
except that I had them. But there is a bond of 
some sort among all the parts of the series ; and 

1 Vol. i., note 75. » Ibid. 



76 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

this bond, to me, constitutes my ego. Here, I 
think, the question must rest until some psychol- 
ogist succeeds better than any one has yet done 
in showing a mode in which the analysis can be 
carried further." l 

Mansel would probably have answered that, 
by pursuing the subject of the relation of self to 
the other Person, some further light would be 
obtained, but this Mill would not have heeded. 
Indeed he was wholly a sceptic and might be 
joined with Schopenhauer when he (Mill) said, 
" There seems to be no ground for believing, 
with Sir W. Hamilton and Mr. Mansel, that the 
ego is an original presentation of consciousness ; 
that the mere impression on our senses involves 
and carries with it any consciousness of a self, 
any more than I believe it to do of a not-self. 
The inexplicable tie, or law, or organic union, 
which connects the present consciousness with 
the past one, is as near as I think we can get to 
a positive conception of self." 2 

The light that was in him seems to have been 
darkness. He spoke of his own mind as if he 



1 Vol. ii., note 33. 

2 Examination of Hamilton, 4th edition, p. 262. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 77 

had no more intimate knowledge of it than of 
another's. What he groped for lay before his 
own consciousness if he could follow Hegel's 
advice and raise it to self-consciousness. 

In strong contrast with Mill is Gatien-Arnoult, 
whom Hamilton approvingly quoted at length. 
In a more succinct statement than that used by 
Hamilton this writer said, " The identity of the 
ego is the continuity of its existence without in- 
terruption or alteration. It knows by the mem- 
ory and consciousness that it goes on without in- 
terruption or alteration. The ego which I am 
now is no other than that which I was yester- 
day. I am always myself. The identity of the 
ego results from its unity,- — that is, its simplicity, 
immateriality, spirituality." l 

Herbert Spencer, under the question, " What 
is this that thinks ?" declares the ego to be un- 
knowable. Common speech makes the ego an 
entity, and the belief in it is "unavoidable"; 
but "it is a belief admitting of no justification 
by reason." He expresses his approval of the 
views of Sir W. Hamilton and Dean Mansel, and 
concludes : " A true cognition of self implies a 

1 Philosophie elementaire : Reponses aux Question iv. 

7* 



78 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

state in which the knowing and the known are 
one, — in which subject and object are identified; 
and this Mr. Mansel rightly holds to be the anni- 
hilation of both. So that the personality of 
which each is conscious, and of which the exist- 
ence is to each a fact beyond all others the most 
certain, is yet a thing which cannot be truly 
known at all ; knowledge of it is forbidden by 
the very nature of thought." l 

Spencer is clearly mistaken here, and the ap- 
peal from Spencer can be made to Spencer. He 
has said that we must believe in self ("Belief in 
the reality of self is a belief which no hypothesis 
enables us to escape") ; and he has said that " it 
is a belief which reason, when pressed for an 
answer, rejects ;" but later he said, " The totality 
of my consciousness is divisible into a faint ag- 
gregate which I call my mind ; a special part of 
the vivid aggregate which, cohering with this in 
various ways, I call my body; and the rest of 
the vivid aggregate, which has no such coher- 
ence with the faint aggregate. The principle of 
continuity, forming into a whole the faint states 
of consciousness, moulding and modifying them 

1 First Principles : New York, 1890, pp. 64, 65. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 79 

by some unknown energy, is distinguished as 
the ego." 1 

This personification of the principle of con- 
tinuity exercising an unknown energy will not 
guide Spencer into all truth, but it would appear 
that in ten years he had come to accept the ego 
as something distinguishable in consciousness, 
and this is a really noteworthy progress. 

T. H. Green is full of light, in contrast with 
Spencer, when he says, " The more strongly 
Hume insists that ' the identity which we as- 
cribe to the mind of man is only a fictitious 
one/ the more completely does his doctrine re- 
fute itself. In all his attempts we find that the 
relation, which has to be explained away, is pre- 
supposed under some other expression, and that 
it is ' fictitious' not in the sense which Hume's 
theory requires, that there is no such thing, but 
in the sense that it would not exist if we did not 
think about our feelings." 2 

Still more strongly and with equal clearness 
Green has spoken in a passage quoted by Dr. C. 



1 Principles of Psychology, sect. 4Q2. 

2 Philosophical Works, London, 1885, General Introduction, 
p. 297. 



80 ' THE HUMAN AND ITS 

C. Everett in his " Fichte's Science of Knowl- 
edge :" l " If there is such a thing as a connected 
experience of related objects, there must be op- 
erative in consciousness a unifying principle, 
which not only presents related objects to itself, 
but at once renders them objects and unites 
them in relation to each other by this act of pre- 
sentation; and which is single throughout the 
experience. The unity of this principle must be 
correlative to the unity of the experience. If all 
possible experience of related objects — the ex- 
perience of a thousand years ago and the experi- 
ence of to-day, the experience which I have here 
and that which I might have in any other region 
of space — forms a single system ; if there be no 
such thing as an experience of unrelated objects ; 
then there must be a corresponding singleness in 
that principle of consciousness which forms the 
bonds of the relation between the objects." 2 

This noble passage might well close the his- 
torical summary of the doctrine were there not 
a few other authors who deserved mention. 
Professor Bo wen boldly defends the self against 
" all metaphysical cavils" by declaring that it is 

1 P. 76. * Prolegomena to Ethics, 34. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 81 

indivisible; that it exercises one mind; that there 
is " a direct consciousness of self;" that it is a 
monad ; that we are conscious of it in itself and 
in its passing into thought and act ; that we are 
not compelled to infer its existence from its 
manifestations ; and that the only difficulty with 
defining it is that it is indivisible. 1 

Dr. Hedge, however, is more Kantian in his 
view. In his essay on Personality 2 he " supposes 
the ego to be peculiar to man ; that the brutes 
have only simple consciousness, not the reflected 
consciousness of self." He mentions Jean Paul's 
account of the birth of his self-consciousness. He 
proceeds to point out that man has three parts : 
" first, the unknown factor which constitutes the 
ground of our being ; secondly, the ego or con- 
scious self; thirdly, the person." By person he 
means, in the proper sense of that word, the 
man's manifestation before men. By the ego he 
means what Professor Bowen and the rest meant 
by it. By the "unknown factor" he means 
either the inmost soul which is not rationally 
discerned or the Divine mind hidden in its 

1 Metaphysics and Ethics, chap. iii. 

2 Luther, and other Essays, Boston, 1888, pp. 281-285. 

/ 



82 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

infinity. He declines to say which of the two he 
means, and it is unnecessary to seek to discover. 
He should be reckoned on the positive side as to 
the ego, but beyond that he is a pantheist of the 
type of the peripatetic Dicsearch, holding that 
God cannot be self-conscious, and that the word 
" I," attributed to Him in the Scriptures, is an 
anthropomorphism. 1 

Dr. McCosh has been referred to as a critic of 
Fichte. Let him also be heard in saying, " Con- 
sciousness cannot be said to furnish an idea of, 
or belief in, our personal identity, for it looks 
solely to the present. But it reveals self as 
present. When we remember the past, there is 
involved a memory of self as remembering. We 
compare the two, the present self known and the 
past self remembered, and declare the two to be 
identical. Consciousness does not constitute our 
personal identity. It makes it known. A full 
and distinct knowledge of self is a late acquisi- 
tion, but from birth there is a knowledge of self 
in acts." 2 

As to these last words Dr. Hedge is more ac- 



1 Luther, etc., p. 281. 

2 Cognitive Powers, Book I., chap, ii., sect. 1. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 83 

curate when he says, " There is a time, varying, 
I suppose, from the second to the fourth year, 
when a human individual first says to himself, 
*I*' Jean Paul probably meant a point in the 
same period, and perhaps it will be found upon 
inquiry that the earliest event which one can 
remember is one which, through some extreme 
sensation of pleasure or pain, awoke the self-con- 
sciousness from its infantile slumber and made a 
deep impression." 1 

Tennyson has accurately and happily described 
the awakening self-consciousness, — 

11 The baby new to earth and sky, 
What time his tender palm is pressed 
Against the circle of the breast, 
Has never thought that ' this is I.' 

"Butas he grows he gathers much, 
And learns the use of ' I' and ' me/ 
And finds ' I am not what I see, 
And other than the things I touch. ' 

" So rounds he to a separate mind 
From whence clear memory may begin, 
As through the frame that bounds him in, 
His isolation grows defined." 2 

1 Luther, etc., p. 282. 2 In Memoriam, xliv. 



84 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

Perhaps the only rival of Tucker's " Man in 
Quest of Himself," as a book treating exclu- 
sively of the self, is a little volume by one J. S. 
Malone, of Waco, Texas. 1 His subject is an- 
nounced as "The Self: What Is It?" and he 
proceeds in an earnest way to point out that 
the intellect is but an instrument of man rather 
than his essential being ; that his real life lies in 
sensibility and in the principal desire among all 
the desires of any one ; that this ruling love is 
the ego; that Descartes should have said, "I 
feel, therefore I am," rather than, "I think, 
-therefore lam;" that the sense of responsibility 
attaches less to our thoughts than to our pur- 
poses ; that to know one's self requires scrutiny 
of the heart rather than of the head ; that the 
development of sensibility must precede that 
of the intellectual powers ; that the training of 
humanity requires attention to be given to the 
affections even more than to the intellectual 
faculties ; and that it has been the weakness of 
philosophers to "become wholly absorbed in 
hair-splitting intricacies of intelligence," while 
the Christian teaching was directed to the heart. 

1 Louisville: John P. Morton & Co., 1888. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 35 

It would be improper to find fault with these 
suggestions unless they were in danger of being 
carried too far. In exalting the will Mr. Malone 
must not forget that the intellect is not only its 
servant, carrying out its purposes, but also its 
guide and instructor, examining those purposes 
and giving judgment upon them. The intellect 
trained without regard to the corresponding 
education of the will corrupts the nature, but 
the least undervaluation of the intellect in the 
account causes a serious loss to the nature. The 
philosophers are not so guilty as they are here 
represented to be, and will be found in good 
time to have done an indispensable work. 

In his lectures on " Hegelianism and Person- 
ality," l Professor Andrew Seth has considered 
the effect of the doctrine of Hegel in regard to 
personality upon the conception of the Divine 
Being. After making a presentation of the 
views of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Green, 
he shows that their tendency was to obliterate 
the Divine self-consciousness in favor of the 
human or the human in favor of the Divine, 
thereby confounding the two, and, in fact, reach- 



1 Edinburgh, 1887. 
8 



86 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

ing " a logical abstraction called the Idea, in 
which both God and man disappear." " The 
unification of consciousness in a single Self" he 
considers to be the radical error of Hegelianism. 
He complains that the self recognized by Hege- 
lians and Neo-Kantians is but " a logical and 
not a real self." It is impossible to see that 
there is not the danger which he points out, 
yet it is not in the present place necessary to 
dwell upon it, except to say that any monistic 
plan, Spinozistic, Fichtean, or Hegelian, which 
admits but one individuality into its universe, 
defeats itself by rejecting the microcosm, the 
only explanation of the universe. If man be 
not a distinct individuality, the world, made for 
naught, comes to naught. There is a truth in 
the saying of the sophistic Protagoras, "Man 
is the measure of the universe." A God alone 
or a man alone is an absurdity. Henry More 
was consistent when he wrote, Nullus in micro- 
cosmo spiritus, nullus in macrocosmo Deus, 1 "No 
spirit in the microcosm, no God in the macro- 
cosm," for both ideas stand or fall together. 
In a small volume entitled " Personality," by 

1 Atheism, III., chap. xvi. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 87 

Professor W. W. Olssen, of St. Stephen's Col- 
lege, New York, 1 we find three lectures, the first 
of which deals with the personality of man and 
the second and third with that of God. The 
treatment is wholly untechnical and without 
reference to the philosophers. It is wisely 
pointed out that man's personality is not merely 
bodily and not merely spiritual, but exists on 
both these planes, in the consciousness of a dis- 
tinct physical existence with its instinct of self- 
preservation, and in the will with its conscious- 
ness of power. 

In the essay on " Personality and the Infinite," 
which Professor William Knight printed first in 
the Contemporary Review and then in his volume 
entitled " Studies in Philosophy and Literature," 2 
an excellent statement of the question is to be 
found so far as regards the personality of the 
Infinite; but, in passing, this thought is ex- 
pressed : " The radical feature of personality, as 
known to us, — whether apprehended by self-con- 
sciousness or recognized in others, — is the sur- 
vival of a permanent self under all the .fleeting 



1 New York, 1882. 

2 London: C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1879, also Boston, 1891. 



88 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

or deciduous phases of experience; in other 
words, the personal identity which is involved in 
the assertion, ' I am.' "While my thoughts, feel- 
ings, and acts pass away and perish, I continue 
to exist, to live, and to grow in the fulness of ex- 
perience. Beneath the shows of things, the ever- 
lasting flux and reflux of phenomenal change, a 
substance or interior essence survives." * 

That rapid and brilliant writer, Professor A. 
W. Momerie, pursued a similar line of thought 
with a similar purpose in his "Personality the 
Beginning and End of Metaphysics and a Neces- 
sary Assumption of all Positive Philosophy." 2 
He means to assail the Comtists with their own 
weapons and to entrap them in their own web. 
Taking Professor Bain's saying, that " the ego is 
a pure fiction, coined from nonentity," as his 
starting-point, he proceeds, not sparing his 
powers of mockery, to defend the ego as to its 
existence, its self-knowledge, and its freedom, 
concluding with a chapter on the Infinite Ego. 
He says, " The fact that every feeling involves 
some one to feel it has never been, in so many 
words, denied. The most zealous opponents of 

1 Page 79. 2 Edinburgh : "William Blackwood & Sons, 1886 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 89 

an ego avail themselves of ambiguities by which 
the existence of an ego can, at pleasure, be 
tacitly assumed. It is sometimes ludicrous to 
observe how, after denying a possible ego, 
writers are obliged to resort to an impossible 
one. Mr. Lewes, in his first volume of ' Prob- 
lems,' seems inclined to make the ego consist 
of a mass of < systematic' sensations, namely, of 
nutrition, respiration, generation, and the mus- 
cles. These, he says, constitute a stream of sen- 
tience, upon which each external stimulus forms 
a ripple, and consciousness is caused by the con- 
sequent breach of equilibrium. But it is manifest 
that this illustration goes for nothing without 
the presupposition of a sentient observer. A 
mass of feeling, however large, cannot appre- 
hend a feeling. . . . Since, then, the necessity 
for an ego is never denied without being tacitly 
assumed, it may be taken to be really a self- 
evident truth, the contradictory of which is in- 
conceivable, that, along with every sensation or 
feeling of any description whatever, there must 
exist a sentient principle capable of feeling it." l 
Dr. Momerie then goes on to consider the aid 

1 Page 29. 
8* 



90 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

given by the memory, since the Positivist may 
grant that there is a sentient for every sensation, 
but may deny the permanent identity of such 
subject. The argument is presented by means 
of an illustration : " I remember that ten years 
ago many of my opinions were changed by the 
reading of a certain book. Now this implies (1) 
the object remembered, namely, the change of 
opinions ; (2) my soul or mind which remembers 
the fact; and (3) a consciousness of personal 
identity, — that is to say, a conviction that the 
mind or soul, which is now experiencing the re- 
membrance of the fact, is the self-same mind or 
soul which formerly experienced the fact itself, 
that it is, in other words, my mitid. The identity 
of which I am conscious is certainly not an iden- 
tity of body, for during the ten years which have 
elapsed my body has lost its identity. Nor is 
the identity an identity of phenomena, for the 
remembrance of the fact is something essentially 
different from the fact itself. The identity of 
which I am conscious is an identity of soul. . . . 
In every act of remembrance I know that I 
have existed in at least two different states, and 
that therefore I have persisted between them." ' 

1 Pages 41-43. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 91 

This is not the place to make use of this 
writer's argument for the freedom of the ego, 
and in what he says of its self-knowledge he is 
not as original as elsewhere, but we must quote 
a summary paragraph for which we are indebted 
to him : " The ego is a real existence. Without 
a permanent subject there could never have 
existed a single remembrance or cognition, nor 
even a sensation. So far negatively. But further 
positively : we are sometimes conscious of our- 
selves, apprehending ourselves along with our 
states in the same indivisible moment of time ; 
and, after reflection upon these past experiences, 
we are able to form a conception of self not less 
distinct, at any rate, than are our conceptions of 
material objects or of natural forces." 1 

Chronologically last, but in the breadth of its 
scope scarcely rivalled, is the treatment of our 
subject in Professor James's "New Psychol- 
ogy." 2 These general points are first treated 
and are called the five characters of thought : (1) 
it tends to personal form; (2) it is in constant 



1 Page 62. 

2 New York, 1890, chapter ix., " The Stream of Thought;" 
chapter x., " The Consciousness of Self." 



92 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

change ; (3) in each consciousness thought is sen- 
sibly continuous; (4) it is cognitive of objects 
which appear to be independent ; (5) it chooses 
among its objects while it thinks of them. In 
unfolding these parts of the subject Professor 
James seems to overstate in one remark when 
he declares that there is a " consciousness of a 
teeming multiplicity of objects from our natal 
day," l but he proceeds very clearly to point out 
that "the elementary psychic fact is not this 
thought or that thought, but my thought, every 
thought being owned." 2 The conscious fact is 
not " feelings and thoughts exist," but " I think" 
and " I feel" ; and he firmly declares : " No psy- 
chology, at any rate, can question the existence 
of personal selves. The worst a psychology can 
do is so to interpret the nature of these selves as 
to rob them of their worth. . . . There are no 
marks of personalty to be gathered aliunde, and 
then found lacking in the train of thought. It 
has them all already." 3 He then shows that no 
two states are ever just alike, and argues that 
the continuous stream of thought bears with it 
the sense of personal identity, so that " the 

1 Page 226. 2 Page 226. 8 Pages 226, 227. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 93 

consciousness remains sensibly continuous and 
one." l 

After dwelling upon the feelings of relation 
and tendency in thought, the " fringe" of an ob- 
ject which affects us when it is not definitely in 
view, the feeling of rational sequence, and the re- 
lation of thought to language, our author takes 
up his fourth point, that thought appears to deal 
with independent objects, and remarks that 
" many philosophers hold that the reflective con- 
sciousness of the self is essential to the cognitive 
function of thought : . . . but this is a perfectly 
wanton assumption." 2 By this refusal to accept 
the ground of Ferrier, Hamilton, and others 
whom he cites, he seems simply to draw the dis- 
tinction, made by Hegel, between consciousness 
and self-consciousness. In mere consciousness 
we know that the thought is ours, but we do not 
stop to objectify the owner. The fifth fact, that 
the thought always exercises preference, either 
in careful discrimination or in mere " accentua- 
tion," is treated in the author's vivid way. 

In the chapter on " The Consciousness of 
Self," Professor James deals with the empirical 

1 Page 238. 2 Page 274. 



94 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

ego, expanding this to its greatest extent by say- 
ing that, " in its widest possible sense, a man's 
self is the sum total of all that he can call his." 1 
His powers of mind and body, his property, his 
family, his ancestry, his acquaintance, his fame, 
his works, and his pleasures are enumerated. 
Thus the constituents of the self may be divided 
into (1) the material, (2) the social, (3) the spir- 
itual, and (4) what the Germans would call the 
pure self. The social self he rightly divides into 
neighborly, official, political, and so on. 2 The spir- 
itual self is " a man's inner being," " a certain 
portion of the stream abstracted from the rest," 
" that which welcomes or rejects," "which presides 
over the perception of sensations," " that around 
which the other elements accrete," " the central, 
active self," " the self of selves." 3 But this self 
manifests itself to him also in bodily sensations, 
and he is inclined to hold that the consciousness 
of it is mainly corporeal. He does not definitely 
adopt this suggestion, but takes great interest in 
the idea as a physiological psychologist, and thus 
approaches Herbert Spencer's " faint aggregate" 
of mind and " vivid aggregate" of body. 

1 Page 291. 3 Page 295. 3 Pages 296-301. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 95 

The conflicts between the selves of a man are 
then acutely described, and favor is given to the 
" hierarchy with the bodily self at the bottom, 
the spiritual self at top, and the extracorporeal 
material selves and the various social selves 
between." 1 Each self has its form of self-love, 
which may take the form of either self-seeking 
or self- estimation. 2 

In considering the pure ego, he discusses the 
postulate : " I am the same self that I was yes- 
terday," and defends it on the ground of our 
warmth of interest in all that has concerned us, 
holding " the ordinary doctrine professed by the 
empirical school." 3 But he goes further and 
uses the illustration of an owner's brand upon 
his cattle to explain the active possession by the 
self of all its objects. " Common sense would, 
in fact, drive us to admit an Arch-Ego, domi- 
nating the entire stream of thought and all the 
selves that may be represented in it." 4 Of 
course, he recognizes that this is Kant's transcen- 
dental ego. Here again he finds a material 
basis for the sense of personal identity in the 



1 Page 313. 2 Page 329. 

3 Page 336. * Page 338. 



96 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

" sense of bodily existence;" but this suggestion 
is placed in a foot-note. 1 

Passing then to a discussion as to what the 
ego is, he finds three theories : (1) the Spiritualist, 
(2) the Associationist, and (3) the Transcendental. 
He does not regard the spiritualistic or soul view, 
commonly held from Plato down, as necessary 
to explain "the phenomena of consciousness as 
they appear." 2 The stream of thought is suf- 
ficient for him. He does not go behind the 
passing thoughts. The hypothesis of a " sub- 
stantial soul explains nothing and guarantees 
nothing." Still, his " reasonings have not estab- 
lished the non-existence of the soul." 3 He 
rejects outright the associationist theory as futile 
in view of the sense of ownership of the sensa- 
tions. He ridicules Kant's transcendental theory 
as cumbrous and obscure and mythological : " by 
Kant's confession, the transcendental ego has 
no properties, and from it nothing can be de- 
duced." 4 The words me and I shall, there- 
fore, mean to him " the empirical person and the 
judging thought." 5 We do not need to refer to 

1 Page 341. 8 Page 344. 8 Page 350. 

« Page 364. 6 Page 371. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 97 

the carefully-selected cases cited from the records 
of spiritism, hypnotism, and insanity to throw- 
light upon the self, but pass directly to the au- 
thor's own summary : 

" The consciousness of self involves a stream 
of thought, each part of which as ' I' can (1) re- 
member those which went before, and know the 
things they knew; and (2) emphasize and care 
paramountly for certain ones among them as 
4 me' and appropriate to these the rest. The 
nucleus of the 'me' is always the bodily exist- 
ence felt to be present at the time. . . . This me 
is an empirical aggregate of things objectively 
known. The I which knows them cannot itself 
be an aggregate, neither for metaphysical pur- 
poses need it be considered to be an unchanging 
metaphysical entity like the soul, or a principle 
like the pure ego, viewed as ' out of time.' It 
is a thought, at each moment different from the 
last moment, but appropriative of the latter, 
together with all that the latter called its own. 
All the experiential facts find their place in this 
description." 1 Even now Professor James ad- 
mits that a hard question as to the phases of the 

1 Page 400. 



98 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

thought may be asked, but he ends with saying 
that the passing thought is the proper ground of 
psychology, and that to go behind this is to enter 
the field of metaphysical problems. 

This is not a thoroughly satisfactory ending 
of so rich a discussion, which has been largely 
metaphysical ; but one is free to take out of the 
impartially presented materials what he will and 
to build as he will. The view of Professor 
James is, it would seem, just that which psy- 
chology would give when describing phenomena 
and declining to draw inferences from them. It 
would then candidly say, " There may be a self 
of all these selves, a judge of these judgments, 
but he is not as visible as his acts are, and the 
acts we mainly care for." Indeed, Professor 
James transcended this "naturalistic point of 
view" when he said, " The basis of our person- 
ality, as M. Eibot says, is that feeling of our 
vitality which, because it is so perpetually pres- 
ent, remains in the background of our conscious- 
ness." l Here, what he means by the personality, 
or at least by its basis, is apparently what Kant's 
term, " the original transcendental synthetic unity 

1 Page 375. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 99 

of apperception," means, and what is meant by 
such expressions as " a man and his moods," or 
Goethe's saying, "I will be lord over myself." 
In this attempted summary of the views of 
philosophers remarks have been introduced 
which indicate the ground to be taken here as a 
basis for what is to follow, namely, the reality of 
the ego, its indivisibility, its distinctly human or 
rational quality, its gradual emergence into self- 
consciousness in the history of the individual 
and of the race, its dependence upon the mem- 
ory for full recognition, its endurance in spite of 
physical changes, its insistence upon acknowl- 
edgment under some mode or other and in a 
greater or less degree by all philosophers how- 
ever sceptical, its enthronement where all men- 
tal operations go on, and, consequently and 
necessarily, its supreme demand to be studied 
and understood so far as light is given. 



100 THE HUMAN AND ITS 



CHAPTER IV. 

MAN A RECIPIENT. 

This indivisible personality which each human 
being has is either a created or an uncreated 
thing, — that is, it looks to some source of life 
outside of itself, or it does not do so and looks 
solely to itself. Is the self self-formed ? Is 
there a self-made man ? 

To answer " yes" to these questions is inevi- 
tably to adopt some theory of metempsychosis or 
reincarnation. Every one's age can be told by 
somebody, and the only way in which one can 
make himself out to be uncreated is to assert 
that he lived previously in some other form. 
That is by no means tantamount to saying that 
he had no date of original creation or birth, 
since he may have been reincarnated a thousand 
times and still from some superior being may 
have received his first form ; but those who have 
believed in metempsychosis have assumed that 
souls were " from the beginning." Saith the 
Bhagavad Gita : u You cannot say of the soul, it 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. \Q\ 

shall be, or is about to be, or is to be hereafter. 
It is a thing without birth." A careful writer, 
who has given much time to a restatement of 
all that can be said in favor of this theory, 
declares at once that this is the truth about 
it. Note some of his utterances at the out- 
set of his book, "Reincarnation: A Study of 
Forgotten Truth:" 1 "The soul enters this life 
not as a fresh creation, but after a long course of 
previous existences on this earth and elsewhere. 
. . . Infancy brings to earth, not a blank scroll, 
but one inscribed with ancestral histories 
stretching back into the remotest past. . . . The 
habits, impulses, tendencies, pursuits, and friend- 
ships of the present descend from far-reaching 
previous activities. . . . The soul is therefore an 
eternal water globule, which sprang in the begin- 
ningless past from mother ocean, and is destined, 
after an unreckonable course of meandering, to at 
last return with the garnered experience of all 
lonely existences into the central heart of all." 2 
In this statement, much condensed, but not 
deprived of any part of its argument, note the 



1 By E. D. Walker. Boston ; Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 
1888. 2 Pages 11-13. 

9* 



102 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

use of the word " therefore" to render " long," 
" remotest," and " far-reaching," equivalent to 
"eternal" and " beginningless." This begging 
of the question seems to be as old as the theory, 
for the self has, at the most, only signs of 
antiquity, — to grant this for the moment, — but 
no signs whatever of eternal duration, and not 
the slightest mark of infinity. Stripped of this 
assumption of eternal being, the theory of 
metempsychosis does not in itself assert that the 
soul is uncreated, but it has made the assumption 
and is to be judged by it. Still, Mr. Walker 
speaks of the " heart of all," and leaves the 
impression that his book is really an argument 
for immortality ,^-Christian immortality, too, of 
course of a Gnostic type. 

Professor William Knight deals very gently 
with this theory, admitting its ethical value and 
saying, " The ethical leverage of the doctrine 
is immense. Its motive power is great. With 
peculiar emphasis it proclaims the survival of 
moral individuality and personal identity, along 
with the final adjustment of external conditions 
to the internal state of the agent." 1 But he also 

1 Philosophy and Literature, page 139. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 103 

makes the same mistake as to the unbegotten 
quality of the soul, for he says, in closing, that 
the only alternative which can be held, if 
metempsychosis be rejected, is " a perpetual 
miracle, the incessant and rapid increase in the 
amount of spiritual existence in the universe." * 

This is the same as to say that the doctrine of 
pre-existence or reincarnation holds that there is 
no increase of spiritual existence in the universe; 
that there is, and has been, no sort of creation in 
case of the souls already existing ; and that these 
souls always have existed. If otherwise, then at 
some time there was a miracle, an increase of 
spirit. Rejecting such increase, one may seem 
to be forced to conclude that the souls now in 
existence have always been in existence, and 
were never created; that, indeed, there are as 
many gods, as many infinite people, as there are 
souls, or, at least, as many " eternal globules," 
differing from the ocean in size, but not in 
quality. 

All the way down the theory is traced, through 
India, Egypt, Persia, Greece (especially with 
Pythagoras), and western Europe. Schopen- 

1 Philosophy and Literature, page 153. 



104 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

hauer liked it as a remedy for the fear of death, 
and said all he could in its favor. Hume made this 
argument for it : " The soul, if immortal, existed 
before our birth. What is incorruptible must be 
ungenerable. Metempsychosis is the only system 
of immortality which philosophy can hearken to." 
The assumption here is in the premises. It 
is not necessary that the soul, to be immortal, 
should have had pre-existent personality ; and it 
is not necessary that the incorruptible should be 
ungenerable or uncreated. Lessing, Fichte, 
Herder, Thomas Brown, Shelley, Southey, and 
many others, are quoted by Walker in defence 
of reincarnation. Emerson said in his " Method 
of Nature :" " We cannot describe the natural 
history of the soul, but we know that it is divine. 
This one thing I know, that these qualities did 
not now begin to exist, cannot be sick with my 
sickness nor buried in my grave ; but that they 
circulate through the universe ; before the world 
was, they were. Nothing can bar them out, or 
shut them in, but they penetrate the ocean and 
land, space and time, form and essence, and hold 
the key to universal nature." x 

1 Walker, p. 98. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 105 

This is so vague as to mean almost anything, 
but a cooler writer on metempsychosis follows 
the same line of thought : " Of all the theories," 
says Dr. Hedge, " respecting the nature of the 
soul it seems to me the most plausible, and 
therefore the one most likely to throw light on 
the question of a life to come." l The poets are 
full of what reincarnationists call their doctrine. 
" Nearly all the poets profess it," says Walker. 

It is, however, very noticeable in all writers 
on this subject that the exceeding weakness of 
their arguments from perceptions of new places 
as familiar, from seeming recollections of persons, 
and from immortal instincts, has compelled them 
to grasp at every possible support, so that, for ex- 
ample, they cite as an authority Spenser with his 
lines, — 

11 For of the soul the body form doth take, 
For soul is form and doth the "body make," 

and even find metempsychosis in the words of 
Scripture, which prophesied that Elijah should 
go before the Messiah (Mai. iv. 5), and which 
later reported the Messiah saying of John the 

1 Ways of the Spirit, chap, xii., on " The Human Soul." 



106 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

Baptist, "This is Elias, which was to come" 
(Matt. xi. 14). 

"Were the array of authorities, legitimately or 
illegitimately cited to support some form of this 
theory, a thousand times larger, the fact would 
remain that to declare souls uncreated is to de- 
clare of every feeble infant, of every dunce, that 
he is a god. 

But even this theory admits that men are 
passing through states of preparation for higher 
achievements, and, shorn of its preposterous 
polytheism, it presents the living man in much 
the common way, as an infant, a child, a youth, 
an adult, always receiving impressions, always 
developing for good or evil by means of instruc- 
tion received directly and consciously through 
parents and teaches, or indirectly and uncon- 
sciously through associations and sympathies 
and ambitions. 

Even in this view, then, man is a recipient 
form. Every organism has its cells which secrete 
that which it needs for nutriment and develop- 
ment. The brain, the heart, the lungs, the bones, 
the muscles, the nerves are made of cellular 
tissue, and this unmistakably indicates a recep- 
tive life in the body, a body formed to receive 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 107 

from without, to assimilate what it needs, and 
thereby to live. It is but a step from this to the 
thought that the whole, being but a complex of 
cells, is fitted to receive a soul, an animating 
presence, or whatever the inner man may be 
called ; and it is but a step beyond that to the 
thought that this inner man is a recipient, but, 
of course, this cannot be anatomically demon- 
strated. 

In respect to the indivisible selfhood, the idea 
of infinite pre-existence must give place to some 
view more consonant with reason and experience. 
The only alternative is that the mind is a created 
existence, in this respect the perfect analogue of 
the body. Here, again, two ways appear : for 
we may think of the mind as created and com- 
pleted, once for all, at some past time ; or we 
may think of it as created in the sense that it is 
so made as to require to be continually recipient 
of that which it needs for sustenance and 
growth. 

The former view, that the mind was created at 
one stroke and sent forth, supplied once for all 
with inexhaustible energy, is that which is held 
by those more cautious reincarnationists who 
avoid giving man self-creative or infinite power, 



108 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

and the same view seems to be held by all those 
who regard 'every one as from his beginning 
elected or reprobated by his Creator, especially 
when held in the extreme form that all subse- 
quent men were on trial for their lives in the 
first man. l But with the daily-increasing 
evidences gathered by science that the cosmic 
creation goes on and always will go on, the 
general mind is accepting the idea that the 
individual man, himself a creation, and a mi- 
crocosmic type of the creation, is in process of 
development. This only revives the old saying, 
"Preservation is perpetual creation." As the 
body, confessed by all to be created, must be fed, 
so the soul, or immaterial man, being less than 
the Divine, is a recipient of life, of immaterial 
" daily bread." 

Every one who has observed the development 
of an individual from infancy to maturity has 
noted the gradual reception and appropriation of 
motives and manners, whether gained by means 
of lessons learned, or acquired by that observa- 
tion and imitation of others which is, in a large 
degree, indiscriminating, and which gives so 

1 The Assembly's Catechism, Question 16. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 109 

much of good or evil to the child. As Emerson 
said, in his essay on " Spiritual Laws :" " There 
is no teaching till the pupil is brought into the 
same state or principle in which you are; a 
transfusion takes place ; he is you and you are 
he ; there is a teaching." 

Granting the immeasurable influence of 
teachers upon young minds, the question may be 
asked, " Do not the influences of heredity need 
to be reckoned of great importance ?" Certainly, 
but this is not an objection to the doctrine of the 
receptive quality of the self. What we inherit we 
certainly receive, — by another way, indeed, than 
that by which we receive the influences of in- 
structors, but none the less do we receive the 
traits which are so important a part of ourselves. 
It is an objection to metempsychosis that heredity 
seems to destroy the fancy of man ascending 
independently by successive reincarnations, but 
against the simple idea of the receptivity of 
man no such objection lies. 

It is, however, when one examines himself 

that he is most convinced of the fact that he is a 

recipient. As he looks over the library of his 

precious, earliest books he sees from what source 

he drew his information, now made a part of 
10 



HO THE HUMAN AND ITS 

himself by constant exercise. As he looks upon 
the portraits of his teachers he recalls the scenes 
in which they ministered to him of their abun- 
dance. As he goes back in memory to early 
days he is like a traveller who views the trophies 
of his rambles, and says, " This I got one day 
in Naples, that in Cairo, that in Calcutta." A 
man's memory may fail to enable him to name 
the respective sources of all that he has mentally 
acquired, but others may assist him to complete 
the account. Especially can they assure him 
that certain of his tendencies clearly represent 
his parents and ancestors. 

Thus he learns, from the exclusion as absurd 
of the view of himself as an uncreated being, 
from the analogy of all other created existences, 
from his own experiences revealed by memory, 
and from the information which intimate older 
friends can give him, that his life is, and has 
been since its inception, a recipient life ; that his 
selfhood is an organism of cells spiritually filled 
or filling ; that he was made by some power 
greater than himself, and that his daily life is a 
process of acquisition from sources outside of 
himself. 

He, therefore, regards without dismay the 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. m 

alternative presented by Professor Knight : either 
every man an uncreated god, or the miracle of 
increase of spiritual existence in the universe; 
but he corrects the alternative by pointing out 
that the second member should read, " increase 
of forms of spiritual existence," for every man is 
a recipient form of life. If the source of life be 
in God, his gift from an infinite source to a 
newly-created form should arouse the repugnance 
of Professor Knight no more than the irrigation 
of a hitherto arid and untilled plain which is 
made thus to increase the plant-life of the uni- 
verse. 

Finally, the selfhood of each individual, his 
proprium, is not uncreated and independent, but 
it is the peculiar form of life which he is, that 
combination of receptive qualities, which com- 
bination makes him to be unlike all others, his 
own self. It is the special and permanent 
capacity to receive in his own way, and to exer- 
cise what common sense wisely calls his " gifts" 
in his own way by making use of what he re- 
ceives, which capacity is his individuality, for 
" what is received is received ad modum recip- 
ientis." 

Professor James's figure of the stream of 



112 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

thought is as graphic as it is convenient, but it 
should never be forgotten that we cannot think 
of a stream without its banks ; that we think of 
a stream with one kind of bed and banks as 
rushing forcefully along to perform magnificent 
tasks, and, on the other hand, that we think of a 
stream with another kind of bed and banks as 
moving sluggishly, with little capacity for giving 
power as it goes. It is not our heredity alone, it 
is not what we have imbibed alone, which makes 
us what we are, or two boys of the same family, 
attending the same school, would be much the 
same ; it is not only our own acquisitions, plus 
our heredity, for then the children of a family 
would be more alike than they are seen to be ; 
it is something plus heredity, plus acquisition, 
which something is the primary cause of 
individualization, and which makes every one so 
distinct a personality. 

What this something is can be told by sug- 
gesting the microcosmic image instead of that 
of the stream alone. While the stream correctly 
describes the thoughts in their flow, we need 
to think also of the solid ground beneath and 
beside the stream, the voluntary nature which 
underlies the intellectual and which constantly 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. H3 

modifies the stream, and we need to think of 
that which makes both bed and stream to be the 
man's own and not another's. This is his pecu- 
liar, original nature, and it is something which 
the man has not made, and which his ancestors 
have not made, and which his teachers may in a 
degree mould but cannot make ; it is the special 
form originally given to his nature, not by an 
irrational decision that he shall be elect or repro- 
bated, but by a decision of infinite wisdom that 
he shall be fitted to fill a certain place. It is the 
man whom the Lord God putteth into the garden 
with its ground and its river to dress it and to 
keep it. As the Israelites drew lots to obtain 
places in the promised land, so there is assigned 
to every one, apart from his parents' wishes and 
prior of course to acts of his judgment, a place 
to fill. " Poets are born, not made," is a true 
saying ; but the word " born" here is equivalent 
to " are created," and is not to be taken in an 
atheistic sense, as if the poet were such because 
he from birth happened to be such. And so 
Dryden says, " Genius must be born and never 
can be taught," * meaning the original creation 

1 Epistle X., line 60. 
h 10* 



114 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

of the mind. Genius is an inherent aptitude to 
do a work, and to this aptitude heredity and edu- 
cation minister, but they do not do more. It 
was weak in Gray to sing, — 

" Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 
And waste its sweetness on the desert air," 

and then to go on about " some mute inglorious 
Milton," and so forth, because to be seen is not 
the whole purpose of a flower, and because a 
true Hampden or Milton or Cromwell is in- 
suppressible. 

~No conception of human order at all commen- 
surate with cosmic order can be formed without 
admitting that every man has a place in the uni- 
versal plan, and that his place is worthy of him 
and of his Maker. We have thousands of men 
in one profession, it is true, but they are all 
different, and their propinquity emphasizes their 
separateness. The greater the variety in a har- 
mony the more perfect the harmony. Since no 
possible conception of the human order is greater 
than this, so all inferior conceptions are unsatis- 
factory, because they leave one to conclude that 
some are brought into the world to have no 
vocation except to imitate others. That some 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. H5 

are of more humble capacity than others does 
not militate against this conception, because the 
humility of a task is no bar to its being regarded 
as important and as conferring true dignity upon 
its faithful minister. The great are not always 
to be envied their proportionate responsibility, 
and it is neither more easy nor more magnani- 
mous to be a king than to be an artisan. 

" "Who sweeps a room as for thy laws 
Makes that and the action fine." 1 

It is a part of the wonderful universalism of 
human order, the infractions of which will be 
considered hereafter, that one grows into his 
place. With many a young man an anxious 
state of waiting to see what his life-work shall 
be is conspicuous, and this anticipates the deci- 
sion which will come very gently in the mingled 
lesson of conviction and circumstance when the 
time is ripe. Others have no anxiety, but find 
duty calling them to some task, by no means 
easy, but not impossible, as it would be if they 
had no fitness for it. 

In his essay on " Lords of Life," Dr. Hedge 

1 George Herbert, Elixir. 



116 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

makes a just distinction between the influences 
brought to bear upon a man from without and 
his inward essential life : " It is often affirmed 
that circumstances make the man ; that charac- 
ter and destiny are the product of influences that 
have acted upon us from without ; that we are 
what these influences have made us, and could 
not, with such motives, have been other than 
we are ; that had circumstances been different 
we should have developed differently, it might 
have been better, or it might have been worse. 
. . . This view of man overlooks the element 
of individuality, or makes individuality itself an 
accident." 1 But he then proceeds to make a 
statement which militates against our principle 
of creative individualization : " If all that before 
our birth contributed to make us what we are ; 
if pre-natal as well as post-natal influences are 
to be reckoned as circumstance, — then it is un- 
questionably true, or rather, it is an identical 
proposition, that circumstances make the man ; 
for then circumstances are the man." 2 

It seems impossible to take this otherwise 



1 Atheism in Philosophy, p. 378. 
3 Ibid., p. 379. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. H7 

than atheistically. "By circumstance I under- 
stand external surrounding," is the author's defi- 
nition. Pre-natal circumstances, then, would 
mean those conditions which go to make up the 
heredity of a person, and this is the same as to 
say that his personality is his heredity, and that 
his heredity is his individuality. Now, if this 
were true, the man would be, not self-created 
indeed, but man-created, — that is, created by 
parents and ancestors. But if one man cannot 
be self-created, one's ancestor cannot be self- 
created ; and if ancestors and parents have not in 
them the source of life, they cannot create other 
men; they can be only agencies of creation. 
Moreover, if the whole man were essentially 
what his heredity was, what would become of 
the world plan ? And how could children rise 
above parents, a David above a Jesse, a John 
above a Zebedee ? 

Not only is it irrational thus, with Dr. Hedge, 
to make finite men do the work, unaided, of in- 
finite energy, but it wholly excludes the thought 
of a Divine authorship of individual and collec- 
tive humanity. It limits the Holy One of Israel, 
and the limited god is mythological. If it is a 
part of infinite wisdom to make men, who must 



118 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

be recipients of life, also mediums of the trans- 
mission of life, it is a mistake in the medium to 
say, " I create." 

It is what is created from above which first 
receives the heredity as it afterwards receives the 
education, bearing both wisely or unwisely. The 
man is more than the stream of his thought, and 
he is more than its bed, yea, more than both ; 
for he is the owner of both, the user of both, at 
once a master and a steward. 

When a man begins to discern his peculiar 
gift and to develop it for the sake of making his 
life " tell" to the fullest extent, when he goes on 
chastening and perfecting himself as a wise son 
uses the portion of goods that falleth to him, he 
is filling his place in the mighty aggregate of 
humanity. Acknowledging that he cannot make 
himself another man, but must remain in his 
special quality and capacity what he was designed 
to be, making himself, as Bacon said, " a debtor 
to his profession," he does not exalt his own in- 
terest to the disregard of others' interests and 
rights, but does his work and exercises his gifts 
in the way which Kant admirably declared in his 
categorical imperative of duty: "Act as if the 
maxims of thy action were to become through thy 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. H9 

will a universal law of nature." And, since Pro- 
fessor Knight has been criticised here, let him 
be heard from in a wise word on this point : "Let 
your whole nature expand to the very uttermost 
of which it is capable, in every possible direction, 
that it may grow into a perfect structure, com- 
pacted by that which every joint supplieth." 1 

The ethical effect of this doctrine is indeed 
" immense." It appoints duty, it enforces duty, it 
glorifies duty. " What have I to do ?" one asks ; 
and the answer is ready, " What you can do." 
And herein is individuality vindicated, for there 
is neither comfort nor value in the possession of 
a special gift, or of anything which is peculiarly 
one's own, unless there be a demand for the ex- 
ercise of that gift, a place for one's peculiar, form 
of usefulness. 

This thought is illustrated upon a day's jour- 
ney, especially among communities not so large 
that the individual seems lost in the mass, nor so 
small that there is little room for combination of 
activities. In a town one sees a few thousand 
persons exercising the arts required for the 
general welfare. In ways which need no 

1 » The Summum Bonum," p. 255. 



120 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

enumeration all are busy. There may be some 
idle on account of wealth, and some on account 
of poverty ; but, between the home of luxury 
and the poor-farm, the average life of the com- 
munity occupies itself. It does not matter that 
several may pursue one calling, for of a dozen 
physicians, each one has so far his own pref- 
erences as to treatment of disease that all 
worthy ones have work, and that no two do the 
like work. It is so with those who might seem 
most bound to sameness of task, — the agricul- 
turists. As to them it is enough to say that no 
two farms are alike, and no two men alike, and 
that individuality is even more noticeable in the 
farmer than in the inhabitant of the city. Pass- 
ing on his way, the traveller reaches another 
community likewise furnished with its people of 
various capacities ; and so he may go on and on, 
round the world. No two communities, how- 
ever, are precisely alike ; no two states, no two 
nations. The cosmos is a unit composed of myr- 
iads of lesser units, as the body has its multitude 
of parts ; and the rational unit is a human self- 
hood, a person. What each one can do is, 
therefore, what each one ought to do. Selfish- 
ness raising the demands of the individual above 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 121 

those of the community may sadly mar this 
system of order, but unselfishness can restore it, 
and, so far as it is found, it mirrors in its un- 
spotted surface the plan of the universe, the 
cosmic unity in variety. 

" Not chaos-like together crushed and bruised, 
But as the world, harmoniously confused, 
"Where order in variety we see, 

And where, though all things differ, all agree." l 

So wrote Pope most wisely. And others 
have sung the same strain, as when Shakespeare 
applies the thought to government, by making 
Henry V. say, — 

" For government, though high, and low, and lower, 
Put into parts, doth keep in one consent ; 
Congreeing in a full and natural close, 
Like music." 2 

A brief comparison between the ethical value 
of this view of a recipient personality, part of a 
universal unity, and the ethical value of the 
view now known as reincarnation, shows at once 
the difference to be so great that what Professor 



1 Windsor "Forest. 2 Act I., Scene 2. 

11 



122 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

Knight calls the " immense" value of the latter 
dwindles to nothing, and it is seen to be only 
self-seeking. That theory is wounded in the 
house of its friends. The misanthropic Schopen- 
hauer should not have been permitted to praise 
it as the remedy for the fear of death, for the 
weariness of memory, and for the tsedium of 
" life-dreams until the will abolishes or abrogates 
itself." * Even Professor Knight talks of its 
" horizon of hope," a purely selfish consideration. 
This is Epicurean, this looks to Mrvana. 
"Ethical leverage" must use the strength of 
altruism. It has long been with many the re- 
proach of the Christian pulpit that it stimulates 
self-love, proclaims future reward for righteous- 
ness, and appeals to the sinful to avoid future 
misery. In his essay on " Ethical Systems," 
Dr. Hedge points out this defect in Paley's 
" Moral Philosophy," once a standard text. In 
this appeal to selfishness, the pulpit has uttered 
a false gospel and denied its Christ, of whose 
unselfish love it was truly said, " He saved others, 
Himself he cannot save." 2 A good shepherd, 



1 The "World as "Will and Idea ; chapter on Death. 
3 Matt, xxvii. 42. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 123 

laying down his life for the sheep, rather than 
a hireling, whose own the sheep are not, is the 
model Christian. And life lays itself down for 
its friends when it pursues its daily round in 
acknowledgment of its obligation to make re- 
turn for benefits had, and to serve the world 
with all it hath, even all its living. 

Schopenhauer, pessimistic reincarnationist, felt 
no " ethical leverage" as he sank lower and 
lower in despair. The " ethical leverage" of the 
theistic view may be studied in the martyrs from 
Stephen down, in every humble and faithful 
worker, in every pure patriot living or dying, in 
all such as, with the spirit of Abou Ben Adhem, 
climb " the great world's altar-stairs." 

In this altruism is no concealed selfishness of 
the baser kind. The self has consecrated itself. 
The personality regards itself as a sacred trust. 
It asks not, " What shall I do that I may inherit 
eternal life?" going away grieved when the 
answer calls for self-sacrifice ; l it bears its cross 
silently; in its underserved suffering it com- 
mands its friends, " "Weep not for me, but weep 
for yourselves and your children ;" 2 it makes no 

!Markx. 22. 2 Lukexxiii. 28. 



124 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

excuses when called to give account of its stew- 
ardship, but is ready to answer with truth, 
" Thou deliveredst unto me five talents : lo, I 
have gained other five talents ;" * it has no reluc- 
tance to confess, " Thine eyes did see mine im- 
perfect substance, and in thy book were all my 
members written, which day by day were fash- 
ioned, when as yet there was none of them." 2 

The self, in this view, beholds as its ideal the 
greatest possible excellence of serviceableness, or 
more correctly the effort to approach that, and it 
rejoices in the discipline necessary to its training 
for the largest, because the most devoted, useful- 
ness in its own task, its own loved office among 
the uses of this life, and its preparation thereby 
for a higher usefulness in another life of imma- 
terial conditions. 

More wisely than he knew spake Polonius 
when he said, — 

11 This above all, — to thine own self be true ; 
And it must follow, as the night the day, 
Thou canst not then be false to any man." 3 

1 Matt. xxv. 20. 2 Psalm cxxxix. 16. 

3 Hamlet, Act I., Scene 3. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 125 



CHAPTER V. 

MAN REACTIVE. 

If the self be a created and not an uncreated 
thing, if, being created, it is and must forever be 
a recipient or perish ; if the fact of this recipient 
nature be regarded as sufficiently shown from 
reason and experience, and if the personality be 
regarded as the peculiar form of receptivity 
which each one possesses, which gives form to 
his own life, and which gives to him his own 
place in the great body of humanity, the ques- 
tion will arise, Is this reception active or passive ? 
This is to ask whether the self in man is a mere 
conduit or not, a passive receptacle or an active 
agency. 

That man is or ought to be passive has been 
a favorite view with many of widely different 
origins. Mrvana is not regarded in precisely 
the same way by all, but it means to present as 
the goal of the soul a state that is passive. Sir 
11* 



126 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

Edwin Arnold is surely an authority on the sub- 
ject, and he has said, — 

" If he shall day by day dwell merciful, 

Holy and just and kind and true ; and rend 
Desire from where it clings with bleeding roots, 
Till love of life have end : 

" Never shall yearnings torture him, nor sins 
Stain him, nor ache of earthly joys and woes 
Invade his safe eternal peace ; nor deaths 
And lives recur. He goes 

« TJnto Nirvana. He is one with Life, 

Yet lives not. He is blest, ceasing to be. 
Om, mani padme, om ! the dewdrop slips 
Into the shining sea." * 

Here the passivity is not present but to come. 
The restlessness of man is to attain it by hard 
striving. But the implication is that the best 
state of the self is its passive one, — "sinless, 
stirless rest." 

Similarly the Christian quietist contemplates 
and cultivates passivity as the supreme end. 
Molinos, in his " Spiritual Guide," makes a 
similar utterance : " By the way of nothing thou 

1 Light of Asia. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 127 

must come to lose thyself in God (which is the 
last degree of perfection), and happy will thou 
be if thou canst so lose thyself. In this same 
shop of nothing, simplicity is made, interior and 
infused recollection is possessed, quiet is ob- 
tained, and the heart is cleansed from all imper- 
fection." l Such expressions caused the sympa- 
thetic Yaughn, in his " Hours with the Mystics," 
to speak of the " holy indifference" of quietism. 

Schopenhauer is far removed from Molinos 
and Fenelon, but his tendency to seek for a 
Nirvana in which the will would cease from 
troubling has been shown above. 

Spinoza in a very different way came even 
more openly to the conclusion that man, the 
wise man, is passive : " He is scarcely moved in 
mind ; but, being conscious of himself, of God, 
and of things, by a certain eternal necessity, 
never ceases to be, but is always possessed of 
true satisfaction of mind." 2 

But these and similar opinions only point out 
by contrast the true view. Man is not passive 
and never will be passive. His energies demand 



1 English edition, 1699, p. 157. 

'Ethics, Part V., Prop. XLIL, Scholium. 



128 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

exercise, and his development in any rational 
way does not diminish but increases his energy, 
concentrating it on some one function to which 
all his powers minister, and in the performance 
of which he contributes his best gift to the wel- 
fare of the whole. It is unnecessary to offer 
arguments for the necessity and consequent 
nobility of work. Without exercise the mind 
and body wither. Lethargy, whether in Nirvana 
or out of it, is as destructive as it is abnormal 
and unworthy. " The gods sell everything for 
toil," said Epicharmus, and Socrates quoted it 
to Aristippus, who had attempted to defend an 
idle life. 1 

There is no true conception of human life 
which overlooks or depreciates its capacities. 
The will which Schopenhauer would have ab- 
rogated must be a diseased will, wanting purifi- 
cation. If the will to live be or become the will 
to serve, it is not to be compared for value with 
an ignoble and self-contented sloth. The " holy 
indifference" of the quietist can be called such 
only in the degree that self-interest is subordi- 
nated to a broader interest in the welfare of the 

1 Xenophon's Memorabilia, II. 1. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 129 

race. All talk of self-extinction is miserable, 
because selfish, unless it means the overcom- 
ing of that in a man which limits his servicea- 
bleness. 

If it be granted that the self is active rather 
than passive, that its recipiency is not that of a 
mere sponge or a mere conduit, the question then 
arises, Is its activity self-originated or reactive ? 
This is involved in what has been said already as 
to the created self. If now independently active, 
the soul can be conceived of as having always 
been so. If self-propelled thus far, then now it 
needs no aid from without. And the reverse 
follows if the opposite view be taken of its nature. 
Reasons have been given for holding that man is 
a created and receptive being. 

Receptivity, if at all active, implies, in the 
degree of its activity, a constant reaction. The 
mind's agency is a reagency. It is to be re- 
gretted that the words " react" and " reagent" 
have only a scientific use, but the fact that they 
are almost entirely restricted to physics is highly 
significant. It has not been seen that man and 
nature are in correspondence, and so far nature 
is better understood than man. 

The tree is a recipient of all that it can obtain 



130 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

by leaf and root, and, reacting upon the life so 
received, it brings forth fruit stored with the 
sunlight and the moisture formed by it into the 
olive or the apple, which contain the seed or 
germinal cell of a new tree. Sundered from 
these sources of life the tree would speedily 
perish. Eeceiving the contributed life without 
reactive operation the tree would have no seed 
in itself and would hopelessly cumber the 
ground. By its reaction upon the action which 
it receives the tree is a tree of life. The bird is 
not self-created, but likewise depends upon life 
which is given to it and upon which it must 
react in co-operative activity by all the means in 
its power, building a nest, rearing young, finding 
food, flying hither and thither as climate requires. 
Refusing to do its part as a reagent the bird 
would die. Doing its little part with instinctive 
faithfulness, it is " the herald of the morn." 

Is not this true, upon a grander scale, of man ? 
Not self-caused, nor self-perpetuated, like all else 
that is created, he receives his life and receives 
it as a reagent. " Freely ye have received, freely 
give." l Hamilton has well said, " Life is energy, 

1 Matt. x. 8. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 131 

and conscious energy is conscious life." l Now 
all that is received by mind and body must 
be energized by the mind or body and sent 
forth in activity, or there is no life in us. 

The body is certainly reactive. " The vital 
agencies are at work incessantly all over the 
system, as if it were a busy laboratory, in build- 
ing up the tissues, in converting elements into 
immediate principles [reckoned as eighty-four], 
and in separating and casting out of the body 
the superfluous and deleterious materials." 2 
" The food in the stomach is rolled in a spiral 
course, is mingled and worked over with the 
acid gastric fluid whose function it is to set the 
purer parts of the food free and to separate them 
from the gross and worthless." 3 

If the mind be not fed, if there be no mental 
assimilation in it, it is different from all other 
created things. But since it has been found to 
be dependent upon life received and made its 
own, its activity is, like that of the body and all 
Nature, reactive. 



1 Metaphysics, Lecture XLII. 

2 Hitchcock's Anatomy and Physiology, n. 789. 

8 Worcester's Physiological Correspondences, p. 45. 



132 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

The empirical evidence of this doctrine is as 
perfect as possible. The infant, so far as it be- 
gins to manifest a thought, is found to be giving 
to the life which it receives a form, an utterance, 
which is its own. The child, as it uses its facul- 
ties to question why this is done and why that, 
is forming its own opinions, and developing, in 
reaction upon the information and all formative 
influences received, its own character. The 
adult, engrossed perhaps in business, sleeps and 
wakes, indifferent to questions of his origin or 
relations, but nevertheless every act is but the 
result of some life received, reacted upon in his 
mind, and sent forth again by voice and hand. 
The most strongly individual men are those in 
whom the reactive force is greatest, so that they 
give forth opinions or perform their acts with 
peculiar emphasis and with marked effect upon 
others. The more reaction a man has, the 
stronger man he is ; the more nearly one ap- 
proaches to the condition of a mere conduit, a 
mere transmitter of opinion, a mere tool of 
another, the weaker he is. 

The movement from the savage state to the 
civilized is in the direction of the development 
of individuality, that is, of reactive ability. The 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 133 

perfection of modes of education looks in the 
same direction, and does not attempt to fill the 
memory and merely enable one to answer the 
questions of others, but aims to expedite devel- 
opment, to sharpen the faculties, and to produce 
noble men and women. Sir W. Hamilton, in 
his address on " Academic Honors," rightly de- 
fined the object of instruction as " determination 
of the student to self-activity," and what is self- 
activity but the putting forth of one's powers by 
energetic reactive exercise ? 

Professor Newman, in his " Theism," describes 
the case : " This energy of life within is ours, 
yet it is not we. It is in us, it belongs to us, yet 
we cannot control it. It acts without bidding 
even when we do not think of it. JSTor will it 
cease its acting at our command, or otherwise 
obey us. . . . But while it recalls from evil, and 
reproaches us for evil, and is not silenced by our 
effort, surely it is not we. It pervades mankind, 
as one life pervades the trees." 1 

1 Edition 1874, p. 9. 



12 



134 THE HUMAN AND ITS 



CHAPTEB VI. 

MAN A FREE AGENT. 

It is in the acknowledgment of man's true 
place in the creation as a recipient but not a 
mere conduit, an agent but not a tool, a reagent 
and not absolute inactivity, that his freedom of 
agency is vindicated from all objection. 

It may be conceded at once that he is not as 
free as if he were not in a world which has its 
laws, and that he is restrained by his understand- 
ing of law and of the penalty which its infringe- 
ment brings, and thus that he is free, not as 
a lawless tyrant, but within the limits which 
belong to a rational, created, recipient, reactive 
being. He is not free to make himself another. 
He is not free to render himself absolutely inde- 
pendent of the source of life. He is not free to 
cease to be a reagent. But, with " the portion 
of goods that falleth to him," he is free to go 
and expend it as he will, and free to return ; free 
to dwell in a far country of ways foreign to his 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 135 

best good, or to abide in peace with bis Father; 
free, wben affected by a seductive impulse, to 
refuse to heed it, or free to obey tbe siren's 
voice; free to decide what occupation be will 
pursue, and free to pursue it in accordance witb 
what be finds to be bis capacity, or in defiance 
of lessons wbicb tell him that he is out of place ; 
free to be a wise man, or to be an unwise 
man. 

It is somewhat common to deny freedom on 
the ground that, when two roads are before a 
man and he weighs the reasons for taking this 
or that, he is impelled by the circumstances of 
the case and makes no free choice. But the 
fact is that he is just as free to ignore as to be 
influenced by the circumstances, to remain still 
as to take either road. A lion being in one path 
and a lamb in the other leaves him perfectly free 
to go the way of the lion, if he will. " What 
shall I do to inherit eternal life ?" l sounded as if 
the young man, when informed, must go in the 
way pointed out; but no, he turned his back 
upon it. " What must I do to be healed ?" one 
asks a physician, and he seems to have no free- 

1 Mark x. 17. 



136 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

dom in the matter, but he can take the remedy 
or neglect it, as he will. 

There is no freedom with Spinoza, there is 
none with Edwards, and there is none with 
materialistic determinism, but in all these and 
similar views there is neglect of the empiric 
evidence of freedom. Even Spinoza finds the 
unwise man using as much " imagination" as he 
pleases in doing his own thinking; even Ed- 
wards seems to have given man liberty to sin ; 
and modern materialism, with all its extreme 
exaltation of heredity and environment, has not 
made out its case that man is a slave to impulse 
and that his acts are the mere reflex of his sensa- 
tions. 

It would not seem to be necessary to plead 
against a form of religious enthusiasm like 
Spinoza's or Edwards's, which would make God 
to have defeated His own end and to have pro- 
duced a race whose humanity was only a name 
for machinery, and this can be considered later 
when the relation of the self to its Maker is 
treated of; but the objection to free agency on 
account of controlling circumstances and inheri- 
tances requires a brief comment; for Professor 
Huxley states a fact when he says, " The prog- 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 137 

ress of science in all ages has meant the ex- 
tension of the province of what we call matter 
and causation, and the concomitant gradual 
banishment from all regions of human thought 
of what we call spirit and spontaneity." 1 

Hume illustrated this tendency when, in treat- 
ing of liberty and necessity, he pointed out that 
all movements in nature are necessary : " Every 
object is determined by an absolute fate to a 
certain degree and direction of its motion, and 
can no more depart from that line in which it 
moves than it can convert itself into an angel or 
spirit or any superior substance. The actions, 
therefore, of matter are to be regarded as in- 
stances of necessary actions ; and whatever is in 
this respect on the same footing with matter 
must be acknowledged to be necessary. That 
we may know whether this be the case with the 
actions of the mind, we shall begin with ex- 
amining matter." 2 

Unfortunately for the value of his argument, 
he not only begins with examining matter, but 
ends there ; thus : the bodily difference between 

1 Lay Sermons : New York Edition, 1871, p. 142. 

2 Human Nature, Oxford, 1888, p. 400. 

12* 



138 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

the sexes is the same as that of their minds, 
with bodily decline in old age goes mental de- 
cline, with the hard hands of the laborer goes a 
corresponding quality of mind, with climates 
racial traits agree; and this correspondence is 
so noticeable that it marks a law. Madmen 
have no liberty because they act as moved ; nor 
have others because they too act as moved. But 
men dislike to confess that they are under 
necessity to act as they do, and they do indeed 
feel a false sensation of indifference or liberty of 
choice, and their religion, " which has been very 
unnecessarily interested in this question," per- 
suades them that they are free. But every act, 
continued Hume, has its cause both with God 
and men, and there is no liberty. "Upon a 
review of these reasonings I cannot doubt of an 
entire victory." 1 Later on in the essay he said, 
" As to free-will we have shown that it has no 
place with regard to the actions no more than 
the qualities of men. It is not a just consequence 
that what is voluntary is free. Our actions are 
more voluntary than our judgments, but we 
have not more liberty in one than in the other." 2 

1 Human Nature, p. 422. 2 Ibid., p. 609. 



RELATION TO TEE DIVINE. 139 

This view is consistent with itself, but it is not 
consistent with the facts. It must be admitted 
that the sexes have physical marks, but this is 
not to admit those marks to be the cause of the 
difference between men and women; for the 
woman, though her frame be weaker and her 
skin softer, is as brave and makes as unyielding 
a martyr as the man. It must be admitted that 
bodily decline is often accompanied with mental 
weakness; but in the extreme weakness of ill- 
ness the mind is often strong and the will imper- 
ative, and in old age there is often discernible a 
youthfulness and innocence which are exactly 
the reverse of what a shrunken and marred 
body would lead us to expect. It must be ad- 
mitted that hard hands and a certain stupidity 
are often found together; but, so far are the 
hands from producing this state of the mind 
that Tolstoi is by no means a singular instance 
of hard hands and tender sensibilities ; indeed, 
every community furnishes its learned black- 
smith or its studious apprentice. There is reason 
to think that the hand of the college oarsman is 
harder than that of the mechanic, and that the 
soft hand of the effeminate student is not a sign 
of intellectual superiority. It must be admitted 



140 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

that in warm climates the natives are more ex- 
citable than those of colder regions; but this 
correspondence of man with nature is carried 
too far when it makes the climate determine the 
character, as may be seen with the Africans who, 
transported to America, make no change of 
character except through self-determined and 
persevering effort. 

That madmen have no liberty is a dangerous 
argument for Hume, since their very capricious- 
ness in many cases defies all attempt to ascertain 
physical causes of their moods. They are more 
free than the sane, seeing that they recognize no 
bonds of moral and civil law. 

As for Hume's suggestions that liberty is a 
wilful self-deception from pride of autocracy, or 
a deception imposed by some other from kind- 
ness, or a religious delusion, it is enough to say 
that vilification is not argument, and that men 
are neither so vain nor so fallible as they are 
here represented to be in order to sweep away 
common sense arising from consciousness and 
observation. Hume felt that his assault had 
been successful, but his " entire victory" was 
spoiled by his own performances rather than by 
those of his unperturbed foe ; for note some of 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 141 

the expressions which he saw fit to use in his 
" advertisement," in which he was guilty of 
mentioning " my design" — " the subjects I have 
here planned out to myself" — " I was willing to 
take advantage of this natural division in order 
to try the taste of the public" — " if I have the 
good fortune to meet with success, I shall pro- 
ceed" — "the approbation of the public I con- 
sider as the greatest reward of my labors, but 
am determined to regard its judgment, whatever 
it be, as my best instruction." And these phrases, 
full of liberty in Hume and in the public, from 
the one who rejected the idea! As with the 
woman, of whom Valerius Maximus tells, who 
appealed from Philip drunk to Philip sober, so 
here an appeal needs only to be taken from 
Hume speculating to Hume advertising. 

Wundt disposes of this cavil against liberty of 
will when he says, "When we say that the 
character of a man is a product of light and air, 
of education and circumstances, of food and 
climate, that it is necessarily determined, as 
every natural phenomenon, by these influences, 
we draw an entirely undemonstrable conclusion." 1 

1 Grundziige, II., p. 396. 



142 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

Schopenhauer, naming his treatise " Freedom 
of the Will," hut meaning the opposite, has 
said, " Man never does hut what he wills, never- 
theless he always acts necessarily. "While we 
act we are at the same time acted upon." l To 
this Wundt also answers. 

This tendency, strongly augmented hy Hume, 
to consider the mind in the light of physical re- 
search alone, has been brought to maturity by 
many modern scientists famous for their achieve- 
ments as such, hut less successful as metaphy- 
sicians than as physiologists. Thus, Herbert 
Spencer has said, " That every one is at liberty 
to desire or not to desire, which is the real prop- 
osition involved in the dogma of free-will, is 
negatived as much by the internal perceptions 
of every one as by the contents of the preceding 
chapters." 2 

What perceptions are meant here will be ap- 
parent in a moment. They are not direct per- 
ceptions of a character to be compared with 
those of conscious freedom of the will, but they 
are physical, and imply to Spencer determinism. 



1 Freiheit, p. 44. 

2 Principles of Psychology, sect. 207. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 143 

He says again, after showing the correlation of 
physical forces and effects, " The forces which 
we distinguish as mental come within the same 
generalization. There is no alternative but to 
make this assertion, the facts which justify it or 
rather which necessitate it being abundant and 
conspicuous. . . . Besides the correlation and 
equivalence between external physical forces and 
the mental forces generated in us under the form 
of sensations, there is a correlation and equiva- 
lence between sensations and those physical 
forces which, in the shape of bodily actions, 
result from them." * 

This bowing out of the freedom of the will is 
joined with remarks upon the heart beating 
quickly under excitement, the teeth grinding 
together in pain, the muscles tightening for 
energetic action, the circulation of the blood in 
the brain in connection with mental activity, the 
effects of stimulants, and other " proofs," as Mr. 
Spencer calls them. But do they prove more 
than the corresponding conditions of the organs 
employed? Looking upon these and similar 
phenomena, does the observer know what is 

1 First Principles, Part II., chap, vii., sect. 71. 



144 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

taking place in the mind of the subject? The 
observer sees that the man is in pain; can he 
predict what the man will do ? If these causes 
have their precisely correlative effects, the man 
suffers according to his injury; but do two men, 
under the same degree of pain, act alike ? May 
not one, while the pain lasts, rail on the Christ, 
while his crucified companion rebukes him and 
uses a wholly different tone ? One is reminded 
of Dryden's lines, — 

" A man so various that he seemed to he, 
Not one, hut all mankind's epitome ; 
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong ; 
Was everything hy starts, hut nothing long ; 
But, in the course of one revolving moon, 
"Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and huffoon." 1 

In defending the freedom of the ego in the 
volume already referred to, Professor Momerie 
quotes as an authority Bain's "Emotions and 
"Will," and answers the arguments of this ne- 
cessitarian with those of Carpenter's " Human 
Physiology," and adds what R. S. Wyld has 
said in his "Physics and Philosophy of the 
Senses :" " Cerebral actions are the symbols of 
thought, but they are no more thought itself 

1 Ahsalom and Ahithophel, Part I., line 546. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 145 

than the sentences of a book. "We must assume 
the presence of an intelligent principle to in- 
terpret the symbols, or we cannot conceive 
thought to exist. Though the brain may follow 
a certain involuntary course of action, and may 
suggest to the mind a train of thought, we know 
that the mind has the power of controlling the 
cerebral action. We can interrupt one chain of 
thought and start another, and out of a variety 
of thoughts we can reject those that are the 
most pressing." "In other words," concludes 
Momerie, after an exceedingly instructive discus- 
sion, " the ego is not merely passively acted on 
by the brain, but is also capable of voluntary 
self-originated action." 1 

As the exclusion of free agency by Spinoza is 
due to an exaggeration of the superior influence, 
so that of the scientists is due to an exaggeration 
of the inferior influence. Between the two in- 
fluences, both of which are here acknowledged, 
a balance exists, and man's choices are actual 
and not seeming. The youth considering various 
ways of life among which he must choose, Csesar 
upon the bank of the Kubicon, every man not 



1 Page 100. 
13 



146 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

a willing slave to habit, is an example of free 
agency. Each side of the scale is examined, 
while, by a power not the man's, the beam re- 
mains level, and then, when the weight of his 
decision is joined to either side, the beam in- 
clines. To go or stay, a to serve God or mam- 
mon," these are the decisions which men can 
make, and which men must make, or they igno- 
bly surrender to some enslaving passion and sell 
their birthright. Personal liberty is the universal 
demand, but what is that worth unless it be the 
correlative of mental liberty, of free agency ? 

The moral value of the doctrine of free agency 
has, of course, always been recognized. Men, 
regarded as the creatures of circumstance, are 
irresponsible. Men necessitated from any cause, 
outward or inward, can have no account to 
render. The unfaithful servant in the parable, 
bringing back the unused talent, pleaded that he 
was under necessity to let it rust, for his master 
was so unreasonable and implacable that the 
servant was forced to remain inactive, and he 
thus represented the large class of people who 
do nothing but grumble over their situation; 
but the just answer was and is that the imaginary 
severity of master or environment cannot be 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 147 

pleaded as an excuse, since there is still left 
abundant opportunity to turn the talent to 
account. 

This is the ground taken by Kant in the " Met- 
aphysic of Morality," namely, that " the will is 
the causality of living beings so far as they are 
rational," and "that freedom is that causality 
not determined to action by any cause other than 
itself," and that " freedom is a property of all 
rational beings," and that " a true conception of 
morality is reduced to the idea of freedom," and 
that " the idea of freedom explains the possibility 
of categorical imperatives ;" l but this owes much 
to Aristotle's treatment of the freedom of the 
will in the Nicomachean Ethics, the third book 
of which concerns itself with that subject, not 
refraining from difficult practical questions : 
"Praise and blame accompany voluntary acts; 
pardon and pity, involuntary. Violence, being 
external, adds nothing of benefit to him who 
acts or to him who suffers. Choice is accom- 
panied by reason. . . . Choice is a desire for or 
tendency to what is in our power, accompanied 
by consultation. The acts pertaining to an end 

1 Watson's Selections, sect. 3, pp. 250-255. 



148 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

must be voluntary and of deliberate choice. . . . 
In a bad as well as in a good man, there is a 
power to act from himself. . . . The temperate 
man acts conformably to right reason. . . . That 
part of the soul which energizes according to 
desire should live conformably to reason." 1 

"Fatalism and atheism," said Hamilton, "are 
convertible terms ;" 2 and here is a profound fact 
which needs at the present only to be stated, 
namely, that a belief in God is so far from 
taking away the freedom of man that it alone 
opens the way for a clear conception of that 
freedom, a freedom which he is too weak to 
provide for himself, but which he constantly 
receives from the providence of the Omnipotent. 

It may be well here to pause a moment upon 
the difficult problem of reconciling freedom, 
especially freedom to do wrong and to inflict 
misery, with the goodness of God or even with 
His government. Perhaps the difficulty, which 
so many writers among the Scholastics have 
struggled with, and which has led to such noble 
but fruitless efforts as Leibnitz's Theodicy, lies 



»Nic. Eth., Book III. 
2 Metaphysics, p. 556. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 149 

in the original misconception of creation. It is 
assumed that God had many possible worlds in 
view, and for inscrutable reasons found the one 
we have, sin and suffering included, to be the 
best, and so, by a kind of necessity, made it for 
better or worse, and thus that His plan can only 
be regarded with a resigned and apologetic spirit 
which represses question and refuses to doubt 
His goodness. This is certainly a very crude 
idea of the Divine. How much more rational 
it is to regard the world as the natural outcome 
of the love and wisdom and power of God, a 
form of Divine order produced by Him for the 
sake of His children and embodying His pur- 
poses. If there were another God, there would 
be another world, but with our God — and no 
other can be thought without accepting some 
inferior conception of Him — comes our world. 
He is not the mere chooser of it, He is the soul 
of it in an unpantheistic sense. He made every- 
thing by sending forth His creative energy form- 
ing its receptacles and filling them with creat- 
ures, and the world was good as its Source was 
goodness itself. 

How then with evil ? It is not a foreign crea- 
tion introduced by necessity or mistake. It is 

13* 



150 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

man's free perversion of the good things. The 
love of self, for example, is surely good in its 
own place ; but, made supreme, it renders man 
selfish. The love which would have protected 
his body now becomes his dominant motive. 
He bows down to that as an idol which other- 
wise would have been an innocent thing. The 
calf was good in itself, but, named Jehovah, it 
was a means of injury and sin to those at Sinai. 
This old difficulty was pressed to its extreme 
form when the question was raised, Is not the 
Divine redemption itself indebted to evil for its 
opportunity and so made subservient to disorder? 
The answer to this is that the redemption was 
the Divine care of men taking that form which 
their perverseness required, but which, in its es- 
sential motive, was, as always, the Divine provi- 
dence. While the law was in their hearts, God 
was manifest ; while angelic messengers sufficed, 
God thereby was manifest ; but, when only this 
mode would suffice, God made His love and wis- 
dom manifest in the Christ and perfectly delivered 
men from the accumulated power of evil so far as 
they would freely receive the aid. In redemption, 
as in creation, God was the loving parent, free in 
Himself and loving the freedom of others. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 151 



CHAPTER VII. 
man's inheritance. 

It might seem at first sight highly important 
to postulate for man absolute freedom from 
hereditary influence, and to insist that every one 
is in no sense dependent upon nor influenced by 
his predecessors. The appearance is that, if the 
least hereditary factor be admitted into the ac- 
count, the individuality is so biased as to lose its 
freedom. To assent to the ordinary claim made 
in the name of heredity is apparently to sur- 
render human freedom, making the ancestor the 
master. But let the questions first be answered, 
Must the claim of heredity to be a law of life be 
allowed ? And is it the case that every man has an 
inheritance which is a factor in his individuality ? 

The answer Yes must be given at once. There 
is not a shadow of doubt about the fact of human 
heredity, nor about all other forms of it. Parent- 
age means transmission of characteristics of race, 
family, and individual. They are not always 



152 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

conspicuous in the descendant, but they are suf- 
ficiently evident to place the theory among the 
laws of nature. The accumulation of examples 
is enormous and need not be gone into. In his 
book on the subject Bibot 1 has traced the trans- 
mission of instincts, sensorial qualities, memory, 
imagination, intellect, passion, will, national 
character, and disease. Under all these heads, 
drawing upon the facts collected by Galton, 
Lucas, Darwin, Montaigne, Morel, Despine, and 
others, he has shown that the reception of life 
through a parent brings with it for good or evil 
an inheritance which may seem overwhelming 
in its influence upon the will. 

There should be no disposition to ignore or 
undervalue heredity. It is an indispensable pro- 
vision for preserving the symmetry of the human 
race and of all life. Without it the races would 
lose their distinctive qualities and mankind would 
be but a chaos, not a harmony of varieties, not a 
unit. Without the operation of this law, there 
could be no improvement of domestic animals 
by careful breeding. Without it the farmer 
would not know what seed to plant. Without 

1 Heredity: English edition, by D. Appleton & Co., 1875. 



RELATION TO TEE DIVINE. 153 

it the order of the universe, in every form in 
which science observes it, would be at an end. 
It is, therefore, not only impossible to deny the 
fact of heredity, it would also be irrational to do 
it. Does it then take away from man his free 
agency, and so make the liberty of self a sham 
and not a reality ? 

As, in the consideration of freedom in the 
preceding chapter, it was found that the nega- 
tive side had been taken by two widely different 
parties, the religious enthusiasts and the material- 
ists, so here we have two kinds of negative reply 
to the question, Does heredity leave a man free ? 

The answer of that theology commonly called 
Calvinistic (but it is older than Calvin) has been 
that man received from the earliest pair a ten- 
dency to evil which he could not counteract. 
This was to deny freedom in the name of 
heredity under cover of religion. To this Cal- 
vin added the dogma, derived through his legal 
training from Tertullian and the Eoman Law, 
that some were " elected," or involuntarily freed 
from the controlling influence of heredity which 
otherwise made them of the reprobated class. 
But this was only to make men more fully slaves, 
since it took away from the elect the power to 



154 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

fall and from the reprobates the power to rise. 
A general doom to evil still left room for de- 
scent, but this took away from the elect even 
that liberty. Here Calvin was not the first. 
Five hundred years before him the Angelical 
Doctor had said, " Many who now are living 
well are reprobates, and many who now are 
evil-doers are elect." 1 Du Moulin, Professor of 
History at Oxford, published in 1680 a little 
book 2 in which he reached the conclusion: 
" That there is a million of reprobates to one that 
shall be chosen so as to be saved ;" by which he 
seems to mean that the vast majority had no 
freedom in matters of eternal interest, and that 
the little minority, " chosen so as to be saved," 
of course had not. 

Calvin, however, was the chief assailant of 
human freedom in the name of original sin: 
" Grace snatches a few from the curse and 
wrath of God and from eternal death, who 
would otherwise perish; but leaves the world 
to the ruin to which it has been ordained." 3 



1 Commentary on 2 Peter i. 10. 

2 Moral ^Reflections, etc., London, 1680. 
8 Commentary on John xvii. 9. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 155 

"I ask, how has it come to pass that the fall of 
Adam has involved so many nations with their 
infant children in eternal death, and this without 
remedy, but because such was the will of God ? 
It is a dreadful decree, I confess." 1 Many ex- 
pressions of a like nature in creeds and dis- 
courses may be found gathered with the in- 
dustry of theological controversy in the " Doom 
of the Majority," 2 by Eev. S. J. Barrows. 

This view of the effect of heredity resulted 
from a confusion of evil with sin, an inexplica- 
ble mistake unless the writers of that day are 
supposed to have been so hard-hearted that they 
cared to look for no escape from their grim doc- 
trine. It was seen that evil was transmitted, 
that lawlessness and passion showed their traces 
in the third and fourth generation, and this 
transmission was mistaken for a transmission of 
sin and guilt. " In Adam's fall we sinned all," 
was the word constantly spoken, but never ques- 
tioned. The least examination would have anni- 
hilated the doctrine of hereditary guilt. 

Understanding by hereditary evil the trans- 



1 Institutes, Book III. 23, 7. 

2 American Unitarian Association, Boston, 1888. 



156 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

mitted tendency to repeat the sins of the parent, 
the disarrangement of the nature, an ill con- 
dition, there is no room to doubt the fact of 
such inheritance. The facts with regard to 
transmitted criminal tendencies are overwhelm- 
ing ; and, if no such facts had been collected, it 
would be easy to conclude a priori that all ten- 
dencies, good or evil, are transmitted. But, just 
as surely, sin and guilt cannot be transmitted. 
The infant is innocent, and cannot be otherwise, 
except he be regarded as a specimen of metemp- 
sychosis. Guilt cannot be transmitted. The in- 
clusion of children in the punishment of parents 
under Greek, Roman, and later law has been 
seen since Calvin's day to be utterly unjustifiable, 
and the Constitution of the United States there- 
fore prohibits it. The very Scriptures on which 
the Genevan commented would have taught 
him : " What mean ye, that ye use this proverb, 
. . . The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the 
children's teeth are set on edge? As I live, 
saith the Lord God, ... all souls are mine ; as 
the soul of the father, so also the soul of the 
son is mine ; the soul that sinneth, it shall die. 
. . . The son shall not bear the iniquity of the 
father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 157 

of the son. . . . Wherefore turn yourselves, and 
live ye." l 

When this distinction has been made, the fact 
remains that a righteous parent transmits helpful 
tendencies to the child, and an unrighteous 
parent unhelpful tendencies. What is the power 
of those tendencies to control the life? is the 
question ; and this may be considered in connec- 
tion with materialistic fatalism held in the name 
of heredity. 

There are three views which make heredity 
fatal to the freedom of the will. The first is 
that God dooms many and elects a few in spite 
of themselves, thereby leaving men no more 
free than Spinoza leaves them. Of untheologi- 
cal views one holds that the inherited mental 
qualities control the life, and the other lays stress 
on the physical transmitted peculiarities as con- 
trolling the mind and so the life. 

The first view has been considered. The 
second view is nearly the same except as it may 
be held by an atheist. If so held, it must be 
met by an a priori appeal to man's essential need 
of free agency if he be man, and by an a posteriori 



1 Ezekiel xviii. 2, 3, 4, 20, 32. 
14 



158 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

appeal to experience and observation* Both 
have been already dwelt upon. It is sufficient 
to say that a man's sense of freedom, which is 
not the easy self-deception which Hume de- 
scribed, has the same ability to disregard in- 
herited tendencies that it has to disregard cir- 
cumstances. 

Suppose one of a passionate race. He looks 
with envy on others who have inherited no such 
temper. Does he perceive himself to be borne 
along irresistibly by his nature, so that it is abso- 
lutely impossible for him to pause before he 
strikes? If he has given way already to this 
tendency till a habit of passionate utterance and 
action has been formed, does he find it impossi- 
ble to change his course ? Perhaps as good an 
answer as any is the increasing conviction in the 
world that bad men can be reformed, that prisons 
are not to be conducted in a hopeless, fatalistic 
spirit, and that the Howards and Elizabeth Frys 
and "Whitefields were justified in their under- 
takings. As one reads the statistics of crime in 
certain families, and sees the fearful effects of 
heredity, let him ask himself, "Were these neces- 
sary effects ? and he will find himself answering, 
No, if he has had experience with criminals and 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 159 

has seen the successful efforts of some to reform. 
Alcoholism is a terrible source of hereditary de- 
pravity, but instances are many of its worst 
effects being overcome. 

Physiological fatalism is the most difficult of 
all forms of determinism to meet, because its 
claims are so arrogant. Here the aid of Ribot 
is valuable : " Suppose it to be proved," he says, 
" that all modes of psychical activity are trans- 
missible; is the aggregate of these modes the 
whole sentient and conscious being ? We often 
hear of hereditary talents, vices, and virtues; 
but whoever will critically examine the evidence 
will find that we have no proof of their exist- 
ence. The way in which they are commonly 
proved is in the highest degree illogical; the 
usual way being for writers to collect instances 
of some mental peculiarity found in a parent 
and in his child, and then to infer that the pecu- 
liarity was bequeathed. By this mode of reason- 
ing we might demonstrate any proposition." * 

This is a severe arraignment of the inductive 
method and goes near to being unjust. It may 
be granted that much evidence for fatalistic 

1 Heredity, pp. 140, 141. 



160 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

heredity has been gathered in the way of 
statistics, but it can justly be urged that statistics 
of reformation of the character have been left 
out of the account. Again, Ribot says, with 
greater force, "By free-will we are ourselves; 
by heredity [viewed as controlling] we are 
others." But it must be confessed that he closes 
with the admission : " This supreme antithesis 
between free-will and mechanism is insolvable 
to us." * He has only a hope that the solution 
will sacrifice neither the one nor the other. 

Neither will be sacrificed. Man will come to 
say to himself, " I perceive my tendencies, and 
I learn that they are hereditary; what shall I 
do ? Shall I go down the inclined plane of self- 
surrender, choosing always to do that which 
requires the least exercise of will ? Or shall I 
resist my tendencies, set myself another goal, 
and, taking command of myself and my powers, 
say with the centurion to this one, Go; to 
another, Come ; and to a third, Do this ?" 2 Ten- 
dencies so ruled will become servants, and he in 
his noble purpose will be king, ruling his own 
spirit. As Goethe said, "I will be lord over 

1 Page 392. 2 Luke vii. 8. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. \§\ 

myself. No one who cannot master himself is 
worthy to rule, and only he can rule." 1 But 
long before him Seneca had declared that no 
man is free who is a slave to the flesh. And 
long before him Solomon had said, " He that is 
slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he 
that ruleth his own spirit than he that taketh a 
city." 2 

It may be well to refer again to the fact that, 
while the physiologist observes from without the 
movement of the system in reflex action, the 
man within looks upon the sensations only as 
suggestions, and is not controlled by them. 

It may also be pointed out that governments 
must recognize as factors the hereditary traits of 
the people to be governed, but must not regard 
these traits as absolutely controlling the people, 
for there can be no reward of righteousness and 
punishment of guilt unless the individual be 
regarded as free, and so as responsible for his 
acts; nor can laws be made with any hope of 
their beneficial influence unless the people re- 
gard the law-makers, and the law-makers the 
people, as free agents. 



2 Prov. xvi. 32. 
14* 



162 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

In parental government the child's inherited 
tendencies must be viewed with full recognition 
of their strength, but the child's ability to resist 
temptations from within and from without must 
not only be recognized but pointed out, so that 
he may gradually learn to rule his own spirit. 

The heritage is not the man, and the influence 
of inherited quality is not the man's master, if 
he determine to call no man master upon earth. 
Neither by motive nor by heredity is the man 
ruled unless he voluntarily accepts by repeated 
surrenders such a ruler. " Man is his own star," 
wrote Fletcher again and again in his " Honest 
Man's Fortune," and Milton repeated it in his 
lines, — 

" The mind is its own place, and in itself 
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." x 

And Tennyson put into the mouth of Enid 
the words, — 

" Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with smile or frown ; 
With that wild wheel we go not up or down ; 
Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great ; 
For man is man, and master of his fate." 2 



1 Paradise Lost, i. 253. 

2 Idylls of the King,— Enid. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 163 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE POWERS OF MAN. 

The self is a unit, but it has various powers. 
As it beholds the operations which are modifica- 
tions of itself, it distinguishes them into classes 
and notes their interrelations. " Man's spirit has 
a self-cognizant existence," says Hegel. 1 That 
consciousness constantly reveals the self, has 
been remarked upon. As to the proper classifi- 
cation of the activities which it has and takes 
note of, there is a difference of opinion. 

Sir W. Hamilton remarks, " The distinction 
taken in the Peripatetic School, by which the 
mental modifications were divided into Gnostic 
or Cognitive, and Orectic or Appetent, and the 
consequent reduction of all the faculties to the 
facultas cognoscendi and the facultas appetendi, was 
the distinction which was long most universally 
prevalent, though under various but usually less 

1 Philosophy of History, iii. 2. 



164 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

appropriate denominations. For example, the 
modern distribution of the mental powers into 
those of the understanding and those of the 
will, or into powers speculative and powers 
active, — these are only very inadequate, and very 
incorrect, versions of the Peripatetic analysis. 
But this Aristotelic division of the internal 
states into the two categories of Cognitions and 
of Appetences is exclusive of the Feelings. . . . 
Kant was the philosopher to whom we owe this 
trilogical classification. But Kant only placed 
the key-stone of the arch which had been raised 
by previous philosophers among his countrymen. 
The phenomena of Feeling had attracted the 
attention of German psychologists, and had by 
them been considered as a separate class of men- 
tal states." l Hamilton then mentions Sulzer as 
having done this in 1751, and others later. " It 
remained, however, for Kant to establish by his 
authority the trichotomy of the mental powers." 1 
He then gives some account of efforts to restore 
the dual classification. 

Krug 2 declares against thus dignifying the 



1 Metaphysics, Lecture XLI. 

2 Grundlage zu einer neuen Theorie der Gefuhle, 1823. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 165 

feelings, because they seem to him to look 
neither inward nor outward, with no " deter- 
minate direction'' — " in fact directed upon noth- 
ing" — " nothing better than a powerless power" 
— " a wholly inoperative force." To this Hamil- 
ton finds no difficulty in replying that it under- 
estimates the feelings, and he calls attention to 
them as they come into exercise : " In reading 
the story of Leonidas and his three hundred 
at Thermopylae, what do we experience? Is 
there nothing in the state of mind, which the 
narrative occasions, other than such as can be 
referred either to the cognition or to will and 
desire ? Our faculties of knowledge are called 
certainly into exercise, for this is indeed a condi- 
tion of every other state ; but is the exultation 
which we feel at this spectacle of human virtue 
to be reduced to a state either of cognition or of 
conation in either form ?" Hamilton grows still 
more ardent, and cites the ballad of " Chevy 
Chase," as if it were unmanly to give the feel- 
ings less than the highest rank. 

Dr. McCosh goes still further back, to the 
Eleatic School, but he does not modify essen- 
tially the account which Hamilton gives of the 
ancient classification. He adds, " Of a later 



166 TEE EUMAN AND ITS 

date some have felt it necessary to draw distinc- 
tions of an important kind between the various 
powers embraced in the Will, and this led to a 
threefold division, the Cognitive, the Feelings, 
and the Will, a classification adopted by Kant 
and Hamilton. In this division the senses must 
be included under either the Cognitive or the 
Feelings, or divided between them. To avoid 
this awkwardness there is a fourfold distribution, 
the Senses, the Intellect, the Feelings, and the 
Will. It should be observed that in this dis- 
tribution the Conscience or Moral Faculty has 
no place." 1 This spreading of the classification 
leads him to propose a new arrangement of the 
faculties under the two great heads of the Cog- 
nitive and the Motive, the former including 
Sense-Perception, Consciousness, Memory, Judg- 
ment, and Imagination, and the second including 
Conscience as a motive-power, the Emotions, 
and the Will. 

Thus McCosh returns to what Hamilton calls, 
when blaming Reid for accepting it, the " vulgar 
division of the faculties." Without going more 
thoroughly into the history of the controversy, 

1 The Cognitive Powers, Introduction, VIII. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 167 

and admitting that the threefold division now 
prevails, let me examine for a moment the appar- 
ently firm position of the Hamiltonians. They 
regard the threefold distinction as self-evident. 
" I see a picture, I recognize what the object is. 
This is Cognition or Knowledge. I may experi- 
ence certain affections in the contemplation, — 
gratification or dissatisfaction. This is Feeling, 
of Pleasure and Pain. I may desire to see the 
picture long, to see it often, to make it my own, 
and perhaps I may will, resolve, or determine so 
to do. This is Will and Desire." l This inter- 
mediate state is the one which is not to be " re- 
duced" to the others, as Hamilton puts it. 

The only question is, Does the mind proceed 
from knowledge immediately to desire, or does 
it pause — a longer or shorter time, as the case 
may be — between knowledge and desire ? I see 
the picture in the first place, and I end with a 
strong desire to possess it ; do I pass from sight 
directly to longing, or do I abide meanwhile in 
pleasure? Undoubtedly there is a middle 
ground; which is neither all cognitive, as when 
I am first looking at the picture and concluding 

« Hamilton, p. 127. 



168 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

as to what it represents, nor all appetent, as when 
I am borne along by a craving to possess it. Yet 
in this middle state neither the cognitive nor the 
appetent is wholly wanting. I continue carefully 
to scan it. I begin to desire it. What else do I 
do ? What other states have I than of contem- 
plating its excellence and closing my affections 
upon it ? " The feeling of pleasure," answers the 
Hamiltonian. Certainly, the pleasure of the con- 
templation and the pleasure of the longing which 
anticipates possession. In passing from the cog- 
nitive end of the line, so to speak, to the appetent 
end I pass through a combination of knowledge 
and will which is certainly not neutral, — that is, 
without knowledge of perfection or imperfection 
and without craving or aversion, but which seems 
to be a state in which both enter so evenly that 
neither predominates in a marked degree. 

But Sir William appeals to the exploits of 
Leonidas and Widdrington, — that is, to past 
events, — as if to cut off all possibility of will in 
the matter, and as if to leave one in passive 
patriotic feeling alone ; but here again the feel- 
ing only describes the transition from knowl- 
edge to will, their interpenetration in the middle 
of the affair. For no one repeats the story or 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 169 

the ballad merely to produce pleasure or pain ; 
and, if this were the object alone, the mind 
would not be content with that, but would feel 
the movement to do likewise, the desire to praise 
and proclaim the act, and the will to act bravely 
in the immediate circumstances of life. 

A better defence of the feelings as a third 
grand division of the powers might be made by 
appealing to the sentiments of pleasure and pain, 
which are felt but are not readily accounted for, 
as a pleasure in tormenting animals or an un- 
easiness in the company of certain persons. 
Here knowledge seems to be wanting, and de- 
sire does not move one so much as in other 
cases. But is not this pleasure the result of 
knowing or of desire to know what animals do 
when tortured, and of wish to obtain the pleas- 
ure of contemplating the victim's writhings? 
And the uneasiness in certain company, — what 
is it but a perception of some unsympathetic 
condition and a desire to escape from it? 

Another way of looking at the case is from 

the ground of bodily analogy. If the mind has 

three divisions, it must be acknowledged at once 

that nothing in the body corresponds with it ; if 

it has two, everything corresponds. The two 
H 15 



170 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

lobes of the cerebrum, the halves of the cere- 
bellum, the eyes, the ears, the nostrils, the bones, 
the double lungs and heart, the members, all 
divide into two, into a right and a left. The 
doubleness of the body is no more evident, 
however, than its arrangement into internal and 
external parts. Every portion has its inner and 
its outer. Let us see if this universal distinction 
of right and left, inner and outer, is illustrative 
of the mental arrangement. 

" The soul," says Schopenhauer, " is the union 
of will and intellect." * He places the will first. 
Indeed, Weber, in making up a motto for his 
" History of Philosophy," says, " The will is at the 
heart of everything," and places as authorities 
the names of Schelling, Schopenhauer, Secretan, 
and Ravaisson. He also quotes the saying of 
Maine de Biran: "No perception without voli- 
tion;" and in his conclusion he quotes "Wundt 
as declaring, "It is from the will that the per- 
ception proceeds, and not the reverse." He 
would make the will " being in its fulness, and 
all the rest phenomena." It is the " essence of 
the human soul" (Duns Scotus), " the principle 

1 Will in Nature, I. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 171 

on which heaven and all nature depend" (Aris- 
totle), " the individual's life itself" (Brandis). 

The least reflection shows that the will is the 
spring of action, as the heart is of the bodily 
life. Without the will to do something, knowl- 
edge is as powerless to effect action as the winter 
sun to produce vegetation. "With will, knowl- 
edge is operative. With desire aroused, the in- 
tellect co-operates. With this precedence of the 
will in potency it is not necessary that it should 
precede in time. The senses are always reporting 
to the intellect events and conditions. The will 
is always instructed and guided by the intellect. 
If it were not so guided, it would be blind, as 
when passion controls reason and leads the will 
to disregard the intellect, making its voice heard 
through conscience or memory or foresight. 
But, when the will is aroused, what does the 
intellect do? 

It ministers to the wish, as the lungs minister 
to the heart. It finds the way, it provides the 
means, it puts at the disposal of the will its 
whole accumulation of information. The intel- 
lect is a helpmeet for the will. The thought 
embodies the desire. It is the existere of which 
the will is the esse. It is the left of which the 



172 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

will is the right. It is the outer of which the 
will is the inner. In their mutual dependence, 
their co-operative activity, the will and under- 
standing are in correspondence with the sexes, 
for in the man the intellectual predominates, and 
in the woman the voluntary. It is with will and 
intellect as Longfellow truly says of man and 
woman, — 

" As unto the "bow the cord is, 
So unto the man is woman ; 
Though she bends him she obeys him, 
Though she draws him, yet she follows ; 
Useless each without the other." 

The will and intellect uniting bring forth act, 
as Horus was born of Osiris and Isis. It is easy 
to illustrate : A piano is heard, and the desire to 
play upon it and bring forth like music is formed. 
The intellect responds with information slowly 
acquired. But daily practice is necessary to 
bring will and intellect into act. When at last 
this has been done in the plane of the body, the 
end is gained. Or, a young man desires to enter 
the ranks of some profession. The desire is not 
enough. The intellect must respond, or he will 
fail. If the intellect does respond, he will slowly 
prepare himself. His preparation is a constantly 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 173 

perfected union of will with intellect, so that, 
when he desires to do a professional act, he may 
know how to do it, and so that, when he has 
learned how to do this and that part of his work, 
he may have the will which will give energy and 
patience and power. 

In the third the former two are one and effi- 
cient. This is life, not to will only, nor to know 
only, but to go forth from the will by means of 
the understanding into serviceableness. 

It will be observed that, in this view of the 
mental operations, the movement of life is from 
above downward, from the spiritual into the 
natural, and not the reverse. Of course it is not 
denied that the organs of sense, affected by ex- 
ternal causes, often offer the first incentive to 
action ; but that they do not control the action, 
which they may advise, is evident from the fact, 
already referred to, that the mind may, and often 
does, reject the impulse to cry out, or to run 
away, or otherwise to obey the prompting of 
the flesh. 

Spiritual influx from mind to body, therefore, 

is here maintained instead of the physical influx 

preferred by materialists. Thus man may be 

described as will and intellect looking to act. 
15* 



174 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

His qualities are love and wisdom looking to use. 
His possessions are goodness and truth for the 
sake of life, of that life which shall make him 
useful, which shall vindicate his existence, and 
which shall make all men rejoice in the exercise 
by each of his own gift. " Life," nobly said Maz- 
zini, " is a mission. Religion, science, philosophy, 
though still at variance upon many points, agree 
in this, that every existence is an aim." * 

It is, however, in the power of man to will for 
himself — that is, for some private enjoyment — 
rather than for others and for useful service. 
He may love that which is evil. His intellect 
pointing out to him two possible ways, he may 
choose that which is injurious rather than that 
which is helpful. Thus he may refuse to listen 
to conscience which would guide him, and may 
degrade his intellect to serve his base desires. 
In this case, the more intellect, the more harm 
will result ; because the intellect must serve the 
will, be it never so depraved. The man finds a 
way for his anger or his greed. And now man 
is not love and wisdom looking to use, but 
lust and folly looking to sin and harm. The 

1 Life and Writings, Chap. v. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 175 

corrupt tree does not bring forth good fruit. The 
light that is in him is darkness. And instead 
of life, larger and larger, as the years go on, he 
earns the wages of sin, which is spiritual death. 

The origin of evil is not entered upon at 
length here, but it may at least be said that 
the possibility of sinning is bound up in man's 
free-agency, and so a selfhood, not devoted to 
use, reluctant in its obedience to laws which 
exalt the good of others as of equal importance, 
at least, with that of the individual, is a source 
of disorder and danger. But man would not be 
man were he deprived of this power to regard 
self as paramount if he would; and that man 
has misused this power, and has for a long time 
been transmitting from generation to generation 
a tendency to misuse it, must be granted at once 
on historical grounds. 

The history of human decline in innocence is 
repeated in every wayward youth. It is a move- 
ment to consult for self, which, imperceptibly 
originating and increasing with increase of con- 
scious power, separated and separates the soul 
from its purity and makes it ashamed before its 
judge. While men were infantile in intellect 
there was no transgression. But the growth of 



176 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

rationality opened the way to perversions of 
every kind; and that it was taken and pursued, 
and is pursued, the wars, the crimes public and 
private, testify on every hand. " So many laws 
argue so many sins." l 

It is true that ways have been found to make 
the selfish man useful, to make the wrath of man 
to praise God; but this is only a palliation of 
evil, not a cure of it ; and cure cannot be found 
except in the formation in the evil man by means 
of his own intellect, which can discern a better 
life and is able to rise above his will, of a new 
heart and a new spirit. 

In so far as this is done, the self dies to live 
again; it operates in the symmetry of human 
order ; it is the image of its Maker ; it is such 
that the king in Hamlet could say, " Try what 
repentance can : what can it not ?" 

Herbart in sad play on words said, " He who 
was yesterday the best (beste) may to-day be the 
worst (bbseste);" 2 but the reverse is also true, 
and sins, though they be as scarlet, may be made 
as white as snow. 



1 Paradise Lost, xii. 283. 

2 Lehrbuch, Book IV., chap, ii., sect. 130. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 177 

Man does not escape injury from his trans- 
gressions ; but, with the change of his purpose, 
the evil is remedied at its root. He is not only 
forgiven, but rescued. The self, humbled, puri- 
fied, becomes a house of God eternal in the 
heavens. 

The disposition to regard evil as merely im- 
mature good, as a transient phase of develop- 
ment, is natural if, by a perversion of reason, 
evil is associated only with the state of the 
savage or the ignorant. The mild forms of sin 
which men commit, knowing no better, are much 
like the act of a child who throws a valuable 
vase to the floor to hear its fragments rattle, 
having no idea of the evil it is doing. The 
serious sin is done wittingly and purposely. 
Callicles was intelligent enough to know better 
than to say to Socrates, " Greatness is providing 
to the full indulgences of evil passions;" and 
Socrates was able to show him that nothing 
could be further from greatness, and to declare, 
" None but a fool is afraid of death, but of wrong 
doing. To go to the world below having one's 
soul full of injustice is the worst of evils." 1 

1 Gorgias of Plato. 



178 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

Cyrenaic indifference to evil has found many 
apologists. Herbert Spencer 1 quotes Shake- 
speare's saying, " A soul of goodness in things 
evil/' and seems to hold this as an ethical 
opinion, but Henry V. was speaking of circum- 
stances then threatening him from without. 2 To 
say in any sense that moral evil is good is self- 
contradictory. It is to say that things diametri- 
cally opposite — a quality and its perversion — are 
one. Epictetus was more just when, looking 
upon the adulterer, he declared that he knew 
not where there was a place for him, as there 
was no place for a stinging wasp. 3 

The confusion of evil with good seems to be 
due to the obscurity which arises from associ- 
ating evil with ignorance and brutishness. Evil 
is to be found in its genuine form and mature 
development among the cultured, among those 
who know perfectly the difference between good 
and evil, and who are capable of instructing 
others and perhaps are in the practice of giving 
such instruction. It is Dr. Faust rather than 
the untutored Marguerite who can grievously 



1 First Principle, chap. i. 2 Henry V., Act IV., Scene 1. 

8 Book II., chap. iv. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 179 

sin, and who in sin presents evil in its tnie aspect 
If the men abont the Christ had said that they 
were blind, they had not had sin: 1 if He had 
not come and spoken nnto them, if He had not 
done among them the works which none other 
did, they had not had sin; bnt now, fully in- 
formed of the right attitude to take, they had 
chosen to hate Him, and their sin was without 
excuse. 9 

1 John ix. 41. 8 John xv. 22, 24. 



180 THE HUMAN AND ITS 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE DIVINE. 

The self of man has been found to be a recipi- 
ent, a reactive agent, and a free agent whose 
freedom it finds but which it does not produce 
by the exercise of power sufficient to govern the 
rest of the universe and to hold it in equilibrium. 
The implication of these facts is, to say the least, 
most significant, and has not been sufficiently 
considered by theistic writers. They seem gen- 
erally to take too distant views of the Divine, 
and to view it as if they had no relation with it. 

In ancient times this was not so. " All is full 
of Jove," said Yirgil, as Augustine relates. 
"Jupiter is whatever you see, wherever you 
move," said Lucan. " Think oftener of God 
than you breathe," said Epictetus. " God is 
truth, and light is His shadow," said Plato. 
" There is certainly a God who sees and hears 
whatever we do," said Plautus. And this con- 
ception remained while men grew sensual in 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 181 

their lives. But at length their idea of God be- 
came so degraded that the worship of Him con- 
sisted of animal sacrifices, and He was thought of 
as likely to show special favor to chosen peoples. 
The question of polytheism, whether it or 
monotheism preceded, and how, if it followed, 
polytheism arose from monotheism, does not 
require full consideration here; but the sug- 
gestion may be offered that the more degraded 
men become, the more superstitious they are, 
and the more inclined to make deities to reign 
over places and diseases and events. Primitive 
Christianity, with its purity of thought and life, 
was markedly monotheistic; mediaeval Chris- 
tianity, with its priestcraft in place of ministry, 
its defence by tortures of what was called faith 
but which was ecclesiasticism, its indulgences, 
its enormities of every kind, multiplied divine 
persons and saints to be invoked at this place 
and at that till the litany included as adorable 
" Maria Dei genetrix, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, 
angels and archangels, holy orders of blessed 
spirits, all the disciples, the innocents," thirty 
others by name, all the popes, and the sanctce et 
sancti not numbered, but said to amount to at 
least twenty-five thousand. 

16 



182 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

The change from that one God to this pan- 
theon may be safely regarded as having an actual 
connection with the ignorance and depravity of 
the later period; and the inference is that a 
similar period in antiquity had like character- 
istics, — priests in power multiplying objects to 
be worshipped with costly offerings, and people 
in ignorance accepting with superstitious com- 
pliance the deities and sub-deities presented for 
their prayers. A pristine state, however, free, 
on the one hand, from priestly oppressions and, 
on the other, from superstitious fears arising 
from a sense of guilt on account of disorderly 
practices, may be supposed to have been mono- 
theistic from the lack of reason to be otherwise. 
" The one is God," said Xenophanes, striving 
to cure polytheism. " I am about to become 
a god," said the dying, avaricious Vespasian, 
showing the evil at its height. 

Thus, not only does it appear that polytheism 
arises out of monotheism when unfortunate con- 
ditions favor its development, but it is also evi- 
dent that the theistic conception, the recognition 
of God, has been subject to marked vicissitudes. 
To one like Augustine, who could find God 
rather by ignorance than by knowledge, there 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 183 

was no need of attempted demonstration. To 
one of atheistic temper, however, arguments 
seemed necessary, and in the formulation of 
such arguments much mental effort has been 
expended, with some success and some failure. 
Some have undoubtedly been thus convinced; 
others remain unmoved in their doubts, not only 
as to the pantheon claimed by the medievalists, 
but even as to the One of the best religious 
conception. 

These arguments have been stated over and 
over again, and their respective claims have been 
examined by friends and foes. 

There is the ontological proof which Professor 
Knight regards as having " a singular fascination 
to the speculative mind," * but he finds it incon- 
clusive. It holds that the notion of God, being 
conceivable, must be true. The ground of Des- 
cartes was that all which he could clearly and 
plainly perceive was true. " Possible ideas are 
true, impossible are false," is the dictum of 
Leibnitz. 2 But these are overstatements, and 
would not be made at the present time when in- 



1 Essay on Theism in Studies in Philosophy and Literature. 

2 Nouveaux Essais, Book II., chap. iii. 



184 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

telligent scepticism has forced theists to weigh 
their words. Wolff was more cautious when 
he made the declaration, " That is possible to 
which some notion responds;" 1 but even then 
he was on an insecure foundation for an ex- 
tended argument, since it might be retorted that 
it is as possible to think of a malign God as of 
a merciful one. " Falsehood can never be clearly 
conceived or apprehended to be true," 2 declared 
Cudworth ; but this is also unsound, as the long 
acceptance of the Ptolemaic theory shows. The 
ontological proof will never satisfy a doubter, 
who will not admit that the logical is actual, 
that an idea well founded in reason is necessarily 
as well founded in fact. Descartes, reasoning 
that " necessary existence is contained in the 
concept of God," 3 is reasoning round a circle. 
He put the contents into the concept and then 
drew them. out. 

The cosmological argument seeks for the 
cause of things. It enlarges upon the order of 
the universe and concludes as to its Maker. 
This has been the common way of appealing to 

1 Ontologia, sect. 102. 2 Eternal Morality, p. 172. 

3 Meditations, Objections, 1. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 185 

scientists of atheistical turn. The student has 
been appealed to on the ground of his own 
discoveries. But the difficulty with this argu- 
ment has been often pointed out. It is incom- 
plete. Its first cause is not necessarily personal, 
nor intelligent, nor even omnipotent. "In the 
admission of a first cause," remarks Hamilton, 
" atheist and theist are at one." l This proof 
may end in Spencer's Unknowable as well as in 
the Christian's Father in heaven. 

The argument from design, the teleological 
proof, is well known. Kant called it "the 
oldest, clearest, and most adapted to ordinary 
human reason." 2 Everything has a purpose. 
The watch found on the sea-shore is not dumb, 
but has a tale to tell of the intelligent designer 
and skilful manufacturer. The preference has 
been given by many to this argument because it 
so fully presented God as personal. But there 
is also difficulty here, for many phenomena 
tempt one to infer an imperfect designer whose 
plan did not exclude accidents and disorders, 
and there is all the time the possibility of con- 
cluding that Law, an impersonal working out of 



1 Metaph , Lecture II., p. 19. 2 Kritik der E. V., p. 651. 
16* 



186 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

a self-caused evolution, has produced what is in 
itself so wonderful a universe. Professor Knight 
wisely remarks that from this proof we get 
Nature, which is not quite what was sought for. 
He says, too strongly, " The conception of deity 
as a workman could never lead to reverence," l 
for this is not impossible ; but it is true that skill 
is not the best attribute to dwell upon in present- 
ing the idea of God to a sceptical mind. 

The argument from intuition, from instinct, is 
preferred by Knight. He grants that the innate 
idea of God is at first weak and dim, but claims 
that it improves with mental growth. He re- 
gards it as a revelation within the soul. This 
revelation is not qualified by man's conceptions, 
as in the case of other arguments, but comes 
pure and perfect from above. It is not constant 
in the mind, to be sure, but sometimes clearly 
declares itself. He finds these recurring intui- 
tions persistent in the individual, the same in 
various generations, harmonious with all other 
useful ideas, and vindicated from all suspicion 
by their beneficent influence upon the mind. 
He defends this instinct against the " cold 

1 Essay on Theism. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 187 

nescience" of Comte, Bain, Spencer, and others, 
and charges Sir W. Hamilton and Dean Mansel 
with being of like tendency. He claims that, to 
deny this, we must give up the omnipotence of 
God, for we take away His power to reveal Him- 
self. He holds that to find God revealed in this 
instinct is to find Him, not in nature, hut in man, 
and thus in the most perfect image of God. He 
finds the whole aesthetic or poetic sense respond- 
ing to this view. "Worship vindicates it, being 
instinctive. "With appeal to Fenelon and Cardi- 
nal Newman, Professor Knight ends his essay. 

On the other hand, Dr. Momerie, in the bright 
little book previously cited, 1 has a chapter on the 
Infinite Ego, in which he favors the argument 
from design. 

Again, Dr. Hedge, in an essay on " Theism," 
questions all the arguments, concludes that reason 
alone " does not suffice to prove the God whom re- 
ligion craves," and looks to faith "which requires 
the qualifying check of science, without which 
she would lapse into monstrous superstition." 2 

1 Personality. 

2 "Theism of Keason and of Faith," in Luther and other 



188 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

It would seem that an argument drawn from 
nature must always be inferior to one drawn 
from man, because the God of nature manifests 
power, skill, or majesty, — some one quality or 
other by no means foreign to a true conception 
of God, but not by itself adequately representing 
Him. 

Is it then to be held that man knows God 
transcendentally, that there is not only a con- 
sciousness of the self and its operations, but also 
of God and His relations therewith : not only 
a self-consciousness, but a God-consciousness ? 
" When I become self-conscious," said Theodore 
Parker, " I feel that dependence [upon God], 
and know of this communion, whereby I re- 
ceive from Him." 1 

It is idle to claim a universal God-conscious- 
ness in so sweeping a way. History will not 
support the claim. Observation must reject it. 
A general sense of dependence on man's part 
may be admitted. A sense of personal relation 
with God cannot be admitted as an integral part 
of self-consciousness, or as a necessary concomi- 
tant of it. If this were so, there would be no 

1 Views of Keligion, p. 243. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 189 

atheists but the insane. If this sense of God's 
presence came unbidden to every youthful mind, 
free agency would be with some affected, and 
with some at least prevented from development. 
It is with Parker as with others : controversy 
spoils calm reasoning and leads to too large a 
claim for the intuitional proof of a mooted point. 
The same claim is made by Mulford in his " Re- 
public of God/' though from another point of 
view: " From the beginning, and with the growth 
of the human consciousness, there is the con- 
sciousness of the being of God and of a relation 
to God," 1 to all which the answer is every 
atheistic book. 

But, when we return to the ground that man 
is a recipient, a reagent and a free agent, we find 
that he is adapted to, and dependent for his best 
development upon, a rational recognition of the 
Source of his life, the One omnipotent upon 
whose inflowing life he and all conscientious 
men react with prayerful co-operative energy, 
the all-merciful One who preserves him in free- 
dom from hour to hour, save as he voluntarily 
makes himself slave to some citizen of the 

1 Page 1. 



190 THE- HUMAN AND ITS 

country far from the Father's house, the country 
of the harlot and the swine. 

"With his sense of dependence he freely ac- 
cepts everything which leads him to acknowl- 
edge God. As a child, if properly taught, he 
already confesses Him. If untaught, he has 
this fact of a Father's care still to learn. If 
taught a polytheism as the source of his life, 
he accepts it. He is left of God free to ac- 
cept Him or to reject Him. He is not com- 
pelled in this or in anything. He is led, in- 
deed, as by a good shepherd; but he may go 
astray, if he will, saying, in his folly, "There 
is no God." 1 

As revealed to the man who has been well 
taught, and who has practised what he has 
learned, such a man as Dr. Mulford had in mind, 
God is a Father. He is wholly personal. He is 
the infinite prototype of man. In Him the will 
is full of infinite love, embracing all, even the 
unthankful and the evil. In Him the intellect is 
full of infinite wisdom, caring for no one to the 
exclusion of others. In Him the union of these 
is perfect, and they go forth, the Love by the 

1 Psalm liii. 1. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 191 

"Wisdom, the Wisdom from the Love, in infinite 
activity. God is seen to be humanity in its 
source. In the imperfect image of weak and 
wayward man He is dimly seen as having in 
perfect form every attribute of an infinite Hu- 
manity. 

It may also be seen that this infinite One, con- 
cerned with all that He has made or will make, 
dwells above the laws of space and time which 
He has introduced into the world as the neces- 
sary accompaniment of material conditions ; and 
that He is omnipresent, in all space but not of 
space, and in all time but not of time, so that the 
here and the there, the past and the future, are 
ever in His presence. " Before Abraham was I 
am" 1 is Divine language as to time; "where 
two or three are gathered in my name, there 
am I in the midst of them" 2 is Divine language 
as to space. 

11 Not circumscribed by time, nor fixed to space, 
Confined to altars nor to temples bound." 3 

It is by a self-revelation that God is made 

1 John viii. 58. 2 Matthew xviii. 20. 

8 Hannah More's poem, " Belshazzar." 



192 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

known, whether directly to one entering into his 
closet to pray in secret, or by the spoken word 
of the prophet. To early innocent man the in- 
ward conviction, to depraved man the spoken 
word belongs. Had man been left without such 
a revelation of God by God in some form, he 
would not have known Him ; for the ignorance 
of his infancy would, in this respect, have con- 
tinued. And, having learned to know God, and 
losing his light through neglect of it, man would 
have remained unconscious of God if He had 
not renewed the knowledge among men of His 
nature. 

But all revelation of God to man, through the 
ear or in the heart, was incomplete till, in one 
life, the infinite love and wisdom and gracious 
activity of God were revealed in a day-by-day 
manifestation. If the Christ failed to be tender 
to all, if He failed to be so wise as to know the 
future and to speak as never man spake, and if 
He failed to be able to succor the fallen who ac- 
cepted His aid, He failed to manifest God ; if He 
were infinitely loving, even to enemies, so wise 
that He was the very Word made flesh, so pow- 
erful that no one's cry of anguish was in vain, He 
was such that he that had seen Him had seen the 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 193 

Father, 1 — that in Him dwelt the fulness of the 
Godhead bodily. 2 

This is not the place to consider the work of 
the Christ, hut it is proper to point out that, in 
the Christ, when He had freed Himself by puri- 
fication through temptation from all the infirmity 
of the flesh, and when He had thereby made 
Himself supremely victorious over all forces of 
evil, — that is, when He had finished the work 
given Him to do, — the Divine Being not only 
declared His existence, but vindicated His provi- 
dence. Thenceforward all arguments, from the 
possibility of the conception, from the cosmical 
demand, from the wonders of design, from in- 
stinctive want, and from human history, must 
yeld in power to the demonstration of the Divine 
by the Divine in the Christ. The argument 
from the Christ, — the Emanuel, " God-with-us," 
— is, and forever will be, unmatched. He was 
actually Jesus. — that is, Jehovah the Saviour. 
He was " the image of the invisible God." 3 

There are two probable reasons why this argu- 
ment has not been used: first, the histories of 
the Christ had been called in question ; secondly, 



1 John xiv. 9. 2 Colossians ii. 9. 3 Colossians i. 15. 

1 n 17 



194 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

He was not so much regarded in His constantly 
declared representative, as in His supposed pro- 
pitiatory, character. This was double surrender 
to scepticism and to dogmatism. The past time 
of darkness may have required it, but it is no 
longer necessary to yield to such influences. 
As more and more the life of the Christ is 
studied in the land of His work and among all 
nations, as more and more His mighty works are 
spiritually fulfilled in mankind, the scepticism 
which was mainly the revolt from gross, me- 
diaeval traditionalism will be cured, and the 
simple and sublime facts of the life of the Christ 
will stand forth in their majesty, while their 
infinite significance will afford a constantly in- 
creasing proof of the truth of Gospel history. 

Again, the prevalence of juster ideas of God, 
less marred by gross notions of His temper and 
judgments, will lead men to look upon the 
Christ as one with God in mercy and in every- 
thing, — " the brightness of His glory, the express 
image of His person." 1 

At the same time the personality of God, at 
first so clearly seen in the terms Father, Son, and 

1 Hebrews i. 3. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 195 

Holy Spirit of the baptismal command that the 
apostles obediently baptized their converts in the 
name of the Lord Jesus, 1 but later so misunder- 
stood that a return towards polytheism was made, 
especially when Mary was recognized as a fourth 
person to be worshipped, will be seen to be repre- 
sented, not by three human images, but by a siugle 
human nature with its trinal constitution of love 
and wisdom and their union in outgoing useful- 
ness, which three are sometimes spoken of as heart, 
head, and hand. 2 So God in His essential Divin- 
ity presented Himself through the glorification 
of the Christ in a Divine Humanity, forming it 
as man's soul forms for itself the body full of life. 
The Son was thus the embodiment of the 
Father, and the saying was fulfilled : " Unto us 
a child is born, unto us a Son is given : and the 
government shall be upon His shoulder : and His 
name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the 
mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince 
of Peace." 3 In their perfect union, when the 
Christ had " ascended on high," when captivity 



1 Acts viii. 16. 

2 Campanella's human trinity is velle, cognoseere, posse. 

3 Isaiah ix. 6. 



196 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

to sin had been made captive, and when death 
had been swallowed up in victory, 1 the Holy 
Spirit was sent forth, as the energy of human life 
proceeds out of the body from the soul. We read, 
" The Holy Spirit was not yet [given] because 
Jesus was not yet glorified," 2 and we also read that 
He came to them in the evening of the resurrec- 
tion day and said, " Receive ye the Holy Spirit." 3 

Before the completion in time of this incarna- 
tion there was the infinite wisdom, the Divine 
form, of which infinite love was the substance, 
and from these the spirit of God had created 
and preserved the universe ; but, with the Incar- 
nation, the Word, which was in the beginning, 
was made flesh, that which was to the infinite 
love as son to father dwelt among us, and, when 
the redemptive work was done on the part of the 
Lord, He breathed on His disciples the Holy 
Spirit, and they went forth to make disciples of 
all nations, with the baptism of the Father, Son, 
and Holy Spirit received into their lives, making 
them the sons of God. 

So far as this is received there is a conscious- 



1 Psalm lxviii. 18 ; Isaiah xxv. 8. 

2 John vii. 39. 3 John xx. 22. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 197 

ness of God in the Christ watching over the life, 
ministering to it, and doing mighty works in it 
from day to day even to the changing of the 
nature, so that the blind in spirit see and the 
spiritually leprous are cleansed. With this con- 
sciousness the self perceives the Divine Self 
operating upon it, yet always leaving it free. 
With this consciousness the acts and words 
of the Christ become transparent with eternal 
meaning, and Christianity is seen to be a walk 
with God, who is but indistinctly revealed in 
other religions. The self, retaining its full free- 
dom, takes Him for its Lord, and follows in His 
footsteps in order to be most serviceable to man- 
kind. It finds its place in the kingdom of God ; 
it is a member of the body of which the Christ 
is the head ; it becomes part of an eternal struc- 
ture of which the Christ is the chief corner-stone, 
rejected, indeed, by the builders in their blind 
depravity, but made according to the Divine 
plan the head-stone of the corner. 1 

Morell has truly said, after reviewing in his 
" History of Modern Philosophy" 2 the arguments 



1 Psalm cxviii. 22. 
3 New York, 1848, p. 740. 
17* 



198 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

for the personality of God, " Were we required 
to point out the region in which the whole argu- 
ment is best concentrated, we should refer to 
man as himself a living embodiment of all the 
evidences. If you want argument from design, 
then you see in the human frame the most 
perfect of all known organizations. If you 
want the argument from being, then man, in 
his conscious dependence, has the clearest con- 
viction of that independent and absolute One, 
on which his own being reposes. If you want 
the argument from reason and morals, then 
the human mind is the only known reposi- 
tory of both. Man is in fact a microcosm, — 
a universe in himself; and, whatever proof 
the whole universe affords, is involved in 
principle in man himself. With the image of 
God before us, who can doubt of the Divine 
type?" 

This is what Jacobi had already said, " Nature 
conceals God, man reveals God." 1 

But man, so examined, may give only an im- 
personal deity, only an Over-Soul with Emerson, 
" a pure identity" with Hegel, Fichte's " opera- 

1 Works, iii. p. 424. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 199 

tive moral order," Leibnitz's " original monad/' 
Spencer's Unknowable, or some germ from 
which man may have been developed. It is in 
the Christ, with God as His inmost soul, minis- 
tering to man — every motive full of love, every 
word one of wisdom, every act a gift of grace 
— that the argument becomes perfect. Lotze 
has said, "Perfect personality is in God only, 
to all finite minds is allotted but a pale copy 
thereof," l and this is true, but to the Christ the 
spirit was given without measure. 

The Divine Self is in the Christ. The " I am 
that I am," 2 sum qui sum, is not unrevealed, 
cognizable only as hidden behind a veil, but the 
" I am" is before us as " that I am," the esse in 
existere, the Divine Substance in its Form ; and 
so it is man's fault if he does not know it when 
unperverted Christianity proclaims it and pre- 
sents it in love and light an d life. 

The Divine Self is in the Christ, and needs no 
other manifestation than its own. Cousin was 
right when he said, "Everything leads us to 
God; there is no bad way of arriving thither; 



1 Microcosm, Book IX., chap, iv., sect. 5. 
3 Exodus iii. 14. 



200 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

we may go in different ways." * But of all good 
ways there is a best, and it is to look to Him 
who truly said that He was the Way, the Truth, 
and the Life. 2 

As the man walks with God in Christ he has 
empiric understanding of His wise ways. He 
finds that evil is to a degree permitted when 
man is determined to go wrong, for otherwise he 
could not be led in freedom, and the use of his 
own reason would be infringed. He learns to 
say, "Before I was afflicted I went astray." 3 
He also comes to perceive that the many disor- 
ders of the world are directly or indirectly such 
as man has produced by the abuse of the powers 
committed to him, and yet that they are so 
wisely watched over that not a sparrow falls 
unnoticed. The man, with his feeble outlook, 
does not gain the explanation of every calamity, 
but sufficient experience convinces him that, if 
he does not know now, he will know hereafter 
when he will see eye to eye. 

The objection to this view of the Divine is not 
a practical one, a charge that it is likely to lead 



1 Critique of Locke ad finem. a John xiv. 6. 

8 Psalm cxix. 67. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 201 

the receiver of it astray from morality ; but it is 
a theoretical one, namely, that it is an anthro- 
pomorphic view. Determinatio est negatio l (Defi- 
nition is denial), said Spinoza. Matthew Arnold 
declared 2 it a delusion "that God is a person 
who thinks and loves." God, he would have us 
believe, is not personal at all, but " a power that 
lives and breathes and feels ;" " a stream of ten- 
dency;" "the eternal not ourselves that makes 
for righteousness." Herbert Spencer selected 
the term "ultimate cause," and Hamilton and 
Mansel held that the Infinite, being uncon- 
ditioned, is unknowable. Mchte's doctrine was 
that every precise notion we form of God must 
be an idol ; to have an idea of God is to limit 
Him : " The act of Thy will I cannot compre- 
hend, I only know that it is not like mine. 
Thou art not as I now and always must conceive 
of being." 3 

Thus is the perfect revelation of God in the 
Christ set aside, and nothing but a sense of lone- 
liness is left to the mind, with a metaphysical 
abstraction to be contemplated. But the weight 



1 Ueberweg's History, vol. ii. p. 66. 

* God and the Bible. 3 Vocation of Man, Book III. 



202 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

of this objection is seen to be easily lifted. If 
we cannot know God in His infinity, we can 
know Him in His influence upon us. If we form 
an idea of Him from the risen Lord, we neither 
degrade the reason nor lower the standard of 
righteousness. Dr. F. E. Abbot is not unwilling 
to say, in his " Scientific Theism," "Because the 
universe is an infinite organism, its life princi- 
ple must be an infinite, omniscient Power, acting 
everywhere and always by organic means for 
organic ends, and subordinating every event to 
its own infinite life, — in other words, it must be 
infinite Will directed by infinite Wisdom. . . . 
It thus manifests infinite wisdom, power, and 
goodness. It must be conceived as infinite 
Person, absolute Spirit, creative Source and 
eternal Home of the derivative finite person- 
alities which depend upon it, but are no less real 
than itself. 1 . . . On the other hand, Pantheism 
is the denial of all real personality. " 2 

In his " Idea of God," John Piske, who is 
equally remote from mysticism, has said, " The 
utter demolition of anthropomorphism would be 
the demolition of theism." 3 

1 Page 209. a Page 211. 8 Page 117. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 203 

This is the same as to say that it is wholly 
possible to avoid those limiting and lowering 
notions of God, from which Christianity, in 
common with all faiths, has suffered, and yet to 
receive God as revealed in the Christ who, for a 
time in the flesh like others as to mortality and 
all that space and time control, rose in the end 
superior to every limitation, yet remained a 
Person. 

The spirit which prevents one from forming a 
low conception of God is commendable. The 
spirit which puts Him aside behind a veil of 
metaphysics is wholly to be deprecated, in that 
it takes away what life requires for its peace, — a 
shepherd of the sheep. 

To him who abhors gross anthropomorphism 
much of public prayer must be extremely ob- 
jectionable. The attention of God to the sick, 
to the crops, to the country, is urgently asked for 
as if He were, indeed, indifferent till aroused, or 
unlikely to provide till informed. This is wholly 
unbecoming to the present age, and ought to 
cease. In the prayers uttered by our Lord a very 
different spirit prevails, that of humble expres- 
sion of trust, of need, of dependence, and of 
danger. God is not asked to hearken, nor to 



204 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

show special favor, but the soul opens itself to 
the Divine influence in order that it may say, 
" Thy will, not mine, be done," and may perse* 
vere in its patience. 

With all that is objectionably anthropomorphic, 
because falsely conceived, removed from our idea 
of God in the Christ, He remains the essence and 
source of Personality, and reveals to man the 
Father to his sonship, the giver to his recipiency, 
the agent to his reagency, the master to his free- 
dom, the rock to his dependence, the redeemer 
to his sinfulness, thereby restoring to man what 
was lost by waywardness, and which only God 
could restore. "As in Adam all die, so in the 
Christ shall all be made alive." l 

1 1 Corinthians xv. 22. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 205 



CHAPTER X. 

MAN IMMORTAL. 

To the question, Is man conscious of being 
immortal ? the answer must be given at once in 
the negative, on the ground that it is not given 
to man to know by his own consciousness any- 
thing except what is either present or past. 
What goes on with him now he knows, and he 
also knows so much of past experience as he at 
any time recalls ; but, except for rare presenti- 
ments, he has no knowledge of the future. His 
predictions and aspirations are not perceptions, 
but are inferences from present conditions. He 
does not live in the future, but only in the 
passing instant. " The present hour alone is 
man's/' as Samuel Johnson said. 

But when man has gained some conception 
of the Divine Lord, his view of life is greatly 
enlarged. Already he may have perceived that 
his was a recipient, though not a passive life ; 
but now he comes to know the motive of his 

18 



206 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

Creator and Preserver. He finds Him a being 
of surpassing love joined with wisdom, he com- 
prehends that the power of God is the exercise 
of love, and he learns that the whole universe is 
an expression of love and wisdom, except so far 
as man may have marred it. But he also sees 
that he is himself the head of the creation ; that 
it has been made to serve him ; and that he is 
superior to it in his capacity to understand it 
and to make use of it. He distinguishes himself 
from all else, and gives names to all. 1 He finds 
that a relation may exist and, for the promotion 
of his usefulness, ought to exist between him 
and his Lord; not the relation of the servant 
who knoweth not what the master doeth, 2 but 
that of friend, as in the case of a father and son 
who are at one in spirit. He comes at length to 
perceive that this God of love could not have 
dwelt alone, contemplating His own perfections, 
but must in His very nature have sought for 
those whom He might bless, thus loving not 
Himself so much as others out of Himself. He 
finds, as all students of mind have found, that 
he cannot think of God except in His universe ; 

1 Genesis ii. 20. 3 John xv. 15. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 207 

that lie cannot form an idea of Him except in 
the field of His work, surrounded by His chil- 
dren, or preparing a place for them that they 
might dwell with Him. 

The arbitrary and perverted ideas of a God 
before whom the world is doomed, who has re- 
lented to elect a few, which few in consideration 
of infinite pain endured by the Son of God 
are forgiven, while all the rest are calmly con- 
templated as irrevocably destined to perdition, — 
all these ideas, it is needless to say, have no basis 
in the religious experience, except so far as man 
condemns himself for his own perverseness, and 
they can have no place in a philosophical view 
of God. To fallen man He so at times appeared, 
and, since the prophet's messages, to be of any 
avail, must be clothed in the language and ideas 
of the people addressed, He suffered Himself so 
to appear; but, as the sun emerging from its 
cloud shows its full radiance, so in the Christ 
the quality of God was plainly shown, and it 
was a fearful perversity which led men back to 
the old conceptions, afresh denying the self- 
revelation of God in the Christ, or rather insist- 
ing upon holding concerning it a purely Jewish 
view, beholding the blood that was spilled, but 



208 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

overlooking the spirit that led to the sacrifice. 
These lurid views of God are disproved by all 
genuine experience wherein men daily learn 
that to obey is better than sacrifice, to hearken 
than the fat of rams. 1 

It also comes to be empirically known that 
God is a spirit; not a law merely, though His 
name is law and His work is order ; not a force 
merely, though there is no force but has its 
origin in His infinite love; but a spirit, whose 
mind was seen in the Christ and may be known 
by every child who looks to Him for its daily 
blessing. 

It is also perceived that man is a spirit. This 
is made plain from his capacity to grow in intel- 
lectual power while his body is from any cause 
declining, from his constant transcendence of 
space and time as he reads of the past or accom- 
panies in imagination his friend upon a journey, 
and from his ability to come into relation with 
the Divine Spirit. 

He comes to perceive that his highest aim is 
to co-operate in carrying out the sublime pur- 
poses of his God, and that his highest attain- 

1 1 Samuel xv. 22. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 209 

ment will be to do so with increasing love and 
wisdom and power for ever. The perception of 
these aims, as representing the purpose of the 
infinite One in creating and preserving man, is 
the perception of the certainty of immortality. 

" 'Tis the divinity that stirs within us, 
'Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter 
And intimates eternity to man." 1 

That this understanding was that of the best 
life of ancient time there can be no doubt, in 
view of the indisputable evidence of this fact in 
the sacred books of Egypt and Asia, and in the 
traditions of all nations. " There is, I know not 
how," said Cicero, " in the minds of men a pres- 
age, as it were, of a future existence;" and, in 
the first book of his " Tusculan Disputations," he 
treats of the " Contempt of Death" by showing 
that all men look beyond death. "It was the 
deep-seated belief of those of the Latin race 
whom Eunius describes as of the greatest an- 
tiquity, that there is consciousness in death ; 2 . . . 
that it is not a catastrophe that takes away and 



1 Addison's Cato. 

2 Peahody's Translation, Boston, 1886, p. 20. 
o 18* 



210 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

blots out everything, but is, so to speak, a migra- 
tion and a change of life." * 

And Cicero made the right distinction between 
the mortal and immortal parts when he said, " It 
was not Hector that you dragged, Achilles, but 
the body that had been Hector's." 2 

In his "Phaedo," Plato treats of the soul's 
immortality, giving his authorities from Homer 
down. The Latin poet Ennius, a century before 
the Christ, wrote as his own epitaph, — 

" Let no one grace my funeral with tears ; 
A living soul, I fly where floats my song." 

It is, however, in the Christ that the percep- 
tion of personal immortality is most distinct. 
In perfect calmness, as He was about to lay 
down His life, He spoke of the house of the 
Father and the place to be prepared for the 
disciples, using as always the language which 
they would best understand, and promising them 
that in due time they should be with Him. In 
all that occurred with Him the perception of 
immortality was conspicuous. 

But the disciples had originally only the 
Jewish tradition that the bodies, placed in 

i Page 21. 2 Page 77. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 211 

graves, would at some time far distant be raised 
again ; and, though they were better instructed 
by word and example by the Christ, they lapsed 
again, so that there was no difference between 
the Jewish and the mediaeval Christian notions 
of resurrection as to physical bodies to be raised 
and skies to be rent. That more light is now 
enjoyed by many is perhaps in part due to a 
study of the doubtful phenomena of spiritualism 
and other evidences of a spirit in man and its con- 
tinued existence after death ; but belief in im- 
mortality is especially due to a fuller participa- 
tion in the consciousness of relation with God in 
the Christ and to a consequent understanding of 
the words and example of the Christ. He re- 
moves the fear of death, and it presents itself as 
the entrance to a life more full than this because 
less burdened with tribulation and less hampered 
with doubt, — a life still in conjunction with the 
Lord, but free from death and sorrow and pain. 

" In the desert of the Holy Land I strayed, 
Where Christ once lived, but seems to live no more ; 
In Lebanon my lonely home I made ; 
I heard the wind among the cedars roar, 
And saw far off the Dead Sea's solemn shore : 
But 'tis a dreary wilderness, I said, 
Since the prophetic spirit hence has fled. 



212 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

Then from the convent in the vale I heard, 
Slow chanted forth, the everlasting Word, 
Saying, ' I am He that liveth, and was dead, 
And, lo, I am alive for evermore. ' 
Then forth upon my pilgrimage I fare, 
Eesolved to find and praise Him everywhere." 

For doubts about resurrection and immortality, 
arising from a solely material view of man, 
there is no remedy save in the training of the 
mind by reason and experience. If Clifford 
could write for his epitaph only, " I was not, I 
lived, I loved, I am not," it is evident that, in 
exclusive attention to science and in abhorrence 
of unreasonable dogmas, he had closed his mind 
to the Christ who could remedy Sadduceeism 
without making a man a Pharisee. There are, 
indeed, myriads of men who through ignorance 
do not at present participate with the Christ in 
the faith of immortality, but as it is certain that 
all are created for heaven so surely will they 
sooner or later be given in freedom an opportu- 
nity to dwell with Him. " And other sheep I 
have which are not of this fold; them also I 
must bring, and they shall hear my voice ; and 
there shall be one fold and one shepherd." 1 

1 John x. 16. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 213 

The existence of the spiritual world is not a 
direct revelation of consciousness, because that is 
concerned with the work of this life ; but, so far 
as the mind is enlightened with the presence 
of the Christ, it draws the necessary and joyful 
inference that the earthly body and the physical 
world are not the whole of the creation but are 
its basis, and that the spirit within man, not 
physical and not mortal, already belongs to a 
world of spiritual substance, not, of course, re- 
vealed to its organs of flesh, but existing as cer- 
tainly as the infinite spirit itself. 

Reason may also conclude that the world 
adapted to its immortal life is no place of idle- 
ness nor of mere ecstasy, but is a world of noble 
uses, of scenes superior to those of earth, and of 
indefinite variety of forms of life. As man finds 
that his conception of God must rise above the 
earthly rule of space and time, he may infer that, 
in the spiritual world, space and time will be 
rather the apparent than the actual environment, 
that souls in sympathy will need no arduous 
journey to be in converse, and that time will 
not be measured, as in this world, by lapse of 
days, but rather by the movement of the mind. 
"With the sense of the presence of the Christ as 



214 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

the light of daily life may be conjoined the 
thought that His presence will be the sun of 
heaven, even as when He was transfigured. 1 

From its own experience in sin, the mind 
infers that every one, however wayward, will be 
cared for with mercy and kindness in the here- 
after, though it is seen that the region in which 
disorderly thought surrounds itself with its like 
will be utterly different from that in which the 
life of the inhabitants reflects itself in holy forms 
and precious substances, and in which 

11 Trees of life ambrosial fruitage bear." 

The effect of sleep upon the mind is nothing 
save as, refreshed by gift of life during uncon- 
sciousness, it gathers strength. The effect of the 
brief sleep of death upon the mind will be 
nothing unless it wakes ere long endowed with 
peaceful and restful gifts. " In the third day He 
will raise us up, and we shall live in His sight." 2 
But it is clear that, in a spiritual world, the en- 
ergies of the soul will find an ability to go forth, 
which they could not have while using a physi- 
cal body restrained by physical laws and more or 
less diseased. 

1 Matthew xvii. 2. 3 Hosea vi. 2. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 215 

The mind now can free itself from an organ- 
ized body only in thought. It will always be so. 
Thought alone, not life, works without hands. 
A spiritual body will be necessary to the spirit's 
usefulness. And research has already gone far 
enough to show that man now has a spiritual 
body encompassed by a physical, but to be freed 
from it by death. How much of this was known 
a century ago is plain from Jung-Stilling's 
" Theory of Pneumatology." Mrs. Browning 
put the same perception into poetic form, — 

M With stammering lips and insufficient sound, 
I strive and struggle to deliver right 
The music of my nature, day and night, 
With dream and thought and feeling interwoven, 
And inly answering all the senses' round, 
With octaves of a mystic depth and height, 
Which step out grandly to the infinite, 
From the dark edges of the sensual ground." 1 

The immortality of man is the destiny which 
infinite Love has assigned to him, and to which 
infinite Wisdom trains him. To become aware 
of this great truth, and to keep it ever in view, 
is human wisdom. So to live that man conjoins 
himself with God in the Christ is to protect his 

1 Sonnet : " The Soul's Expression." 



216 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

recipiency from the intrusion of evil, to promote 
his reactive work in casting out what is un- 
worthy in motive and in obtaining what is 
worthy because helpful to the fellow-man, to 
magnify his free-agency above all subversion to 
the slavery of sinful habit, and to open before 
him a vista of increasing usefulnesSc 

Man can imagine nothing better, he can ask 
for nothing more, than that he should be thus 
preserved and promoted in strength and right- 
eous service, world without end. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 217 



CHAPTER XL 

MAN IN CHRISTIANITY. 

If the previous portions of this essay seem to 
contain rational views, their reasonableness may- 
be deemed their sufficient support. If they seem 
to reach the ultimate ground of human knowl- 
edge, they are philosophically approved. The 
course of the treatment, however, led us up to 
God, not as an idea only, but as Himself a self, 
a personality of infinite and self-subsisting na- 
ture, self-revealed in part in the working of the 
world, but especially and perfectly in the qualities 
of the Christ. It would therefore seem fitting 
to compare these views with the words of the 
Christ in order that it may be seen whether they 
obtain favorable judgment as being of the Truth 
which was in Him. 

The same order of thought may be followed, 
and this brings first to mind — 

1. THE SELF OF MAN. 

Of course it will be granted that, if the self 
of man be but a delusion, there is no rationality 

K 19 



218 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

in the words of appeal or warning or instruction 
which may have been uttered by the Christ or 
by any other. In that case man does not control 
his acts, and is not responsible for them. In 
that case the gospel, or any uplifting message, is 
a mockery and a part of the general deceit to 
which man is subject. The very attitude of the 
Christ is, therefore, an evidence of His finding 
a self in man, and such a self, it may in the end 
appear, as has been herein described. 

It would be easy to show from many of His 
sayings that the Christ found in Himself no 
mere reflection of Divinity, but an actual per- 
sonality, whose name was Jesus, whose inheri- 
tance was weighted with that which made Him 
open to constant temptation, and whose purifica- 
tion from all frailty was the work of overcoming 
the world's evil, and so delivering man ; but this 
is not the point which needs here to be enlarged 
upon : only let it be understood that the words 
of the Christ were not words of which He was 
merely a messenger, but were words from His 
own experience. He knew what was in man. 1 
He spoke that which He knew, and He testified 

1 John ii. 25. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 219 

that which He had seen. 1 The gospel is the ex- 
perience of the Christ which, for their sakes, 
He shared with men. For their sakes He sanc- 
tified Himself that they might be sanctified 
through the truth. 2 To as many as receive Him 
is given power to become the sons of God, so 
that He may speak to each one of " my God and 
your God," 3 and so that they may say one to 
another, "Beloved, now are we the sons of 
God." 4 

It is, however, to His words as to others, 
rather than as to Himself, that attention is now 
called. 

A striking passage is found in His address to 
some Jews who were examining His claim to be 
from God. They, boasting of their sure inheri- 
tance of the promise made to Abraham, were 
warned by Him that they were of another father, 
another nature, and that this devil, or spirit of 
evil, was deceiving them : " There is no truth in 
him. When he speaketh a lie he speaketh of 
his own; for he is a liar and the father thereof." 6 
This is the rendering of both versions. The 



i John iii. 11. 2 John xvii. 19. 3 John xx. 17. 

* 1 John iii. 2. 5 John viii. 44. 



220 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

new has, however, as an alternative the interest- 
ing change, — " When one speaketh a lie," 
making the declaration universal, and to the 
effect that a lie, a misuse of intellect and voice 
to declare the opposite of the fact in any case, is 
an act of evil self-assertion. "He speaketh of 
his own," l*. rw idtcov, is as complete a declaration 
of the selfhood as could be indirectly made. It 
recognizes the self of man, and points out its 
power. What man has as his own to use or 
to abuse is that which some call the ego and 
others the personality, and which is the proprium, 
the peculiar possession, intended to be used by 
each in filling his particular place in the great 
whole of humanity, but intended also to consti- 
tute him an individual and truly a man. The 
lie is not spoken from God by man, and it is not 
the truth of God; it is spoken by man of or 
from what is his own, and it is the truth of a 
wayward, self-directed man who has rejected the 
father who gave the portion of goods and has 
gone away to a far country to waste his sub- 
stance and to join himself to one of that country 
in place of his father. The lie is riotous living. 
The same marked declaration of the selfhood 
is found in a passage addressed to the disciples 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 221 

to forewarn them of difficulties to be met with 
in their work : " If ye were of the world, the 
world would love its own." 1 Here the world 
means, of course, the company of the worldly. 
If the disciples could fall in with the way of the 
majority, all would be made pleasant; but if, as 
was necessary, they must oppose the world, then 
danger would arise from the general hatred of 
them. If they were of the world, of the world's 
party and opinion, they would be safe, for the 
world would love its own, to Utov. It had self- 
love and no other. For that which did not 
serve its self-love it had hatred. Here the men, 
not loving to serve, but loving each to rule from 
self-love, were described as having a selfhood 
perverted and hostile to its true use. If the 
selfhood of men had not been perverted, there 
would have been no one persecuted for right- 
eousness' sake. 

"When speaking to the disciples about faithful- 
ness, the Christ said, " If ye have not been faith- 
ful in that which is another's, who will give you 
that which is your own ?" 2 This is the same as 
to say that, if, as stewards of Divine gifts, men 



1 John xv. 19. 2 Luke xvi. 12. 

19* 



222 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

are unfaithful, they do not acquire thereby true 
riches, but are wanting in noble qualities. They 
reject what is given, and then, as to the treasures 
of heaven, have not any that are their own. 
Their own possessions are base and, in the sight 
of heaven, valueless. This passage does not 
take away selfhood, as might appear to be the 
case at first sight, but points out the emptiness 
of the selfhood of the evil as to all that is of 
true worth. 

An important saying is that which is found in 
two gospels and which was the subject of an 
extended explanation : " Not that which entereth 
into the mouth defileth the man ; but that which 
proceedeth out of the mouth, this defileth the 
man." 1 In another place the saying is recorded 
thus : " There is nothing from without the man, 
that going into him can defile him; but the 
things which proceed out of the man are those 
that defile the man." 2 The Pharisees had 
showed their displeasure at a doctrine which 
neglected their ceremonial ablutions, and the 
disciples, who were not clear as to their Master's 
teaching, appealed to Him for an explanation. 

1 Matthew xv. 11. 2 Mark vii. 15. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 223 

It was at once given by making use of food as 
an example. If a substance which, the body 
could not assimilate was taken into the system, 
it was finally expelled ; and so a man might re- 
ject a harmful influence and go undefiled. But, 
if he received it with appetite and appropriated 
it, then it became a part of himself, of his self- 
hood, and it defiled him from within. This was 
the only defilement to be feared. 

With this belongs the saying, " The good 
man out of the good treasure of his heart 
bringeth forth that which is good ; and the evil 
man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth 
forth that which is evil : for out of the abun- 
dance of the heart his mouth speaketh." l This 
clearly points out that, whether it be good or 
evil, and, of course, equally so if it be of a 
mixed quality, the selfhood is the heart of the 
man, and its acts are truly his acts. 

A similar recognition of the self in man is 
found in the rebuke which was given to one of 
the disciples who, yielding to fear and to a short- 
sighted affection for his master's comfort, had 
sought to dissuade Him from going to Jerusalem 

1 Luke vi. 45. 



224 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

and death : " Thou mindest not the things of 
God, but the things of men." l Here the things 
of men represent those self-seeking and unlov- 
ing qualities which had unfortunately become 
the characteristics of the self in man. 

The same unholy condition is fully illustrated 
in the parable of the wicked husbandmen who 
refused to recognize the rights of the owner of 
the vineyard, seeking to render themselves free 
from his authority, and even killing his son with 
the hope to "take his inheritance," "that the 
inheritance may be ours," as they said. 2 This 
precisely sets forth the waywardness which leads 
man to refuse to exercise himself for the sake 
of his God, — that is, of others, for God has no 
selfish aim, — and to prefer to exercise himself in 
fancied contempt of God and for his own sake. 
The good husbandman would have enjoyed his 
gifts as constituting a trust, but the evil husband- 
man would brook no supervision but wished to 
be as God, knowing no superior authority. 

The same thought as to perversion of the self 
is found in the words spoken to the disciples : 

1 Matthew xvi. 23 ; Mark viii. 33. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 225 

" What is a man profited, if he gain the whole 
world, and lose or forfeit his own self?" 1 This 
question is also found in the form, " What is a 
man profited, if he shall gain the whole world 
and lose his own life ?" 2 For " life" here the 
old version read " soul." But the meaning is 
conveyed by the words " his own self." If he 
pays away the purity of his nature for worldly 
benefits, making himself a slave to greed, he has 
forfeited his own self, he has profaned the dwell- 
ing-place of God even to the ground. 

It was this evil independence — which is really 
slavery — which was meant when the Christ said 
that, if one came " in his own name," he would 
be received ; 3 for it was plain that His enemies 
had a high appreciation of the self-assertive life 
and no respect whatever for the life of steward- 
ship. 

The possibility of man's self-assertion and 
consequent abuse of his gifts is implied in the 
words uttered by the father to his son in the 
parable of the prodigal: "All that I have is 
thine." 4 The elder son, to whom this was said, 



2 Mark viii. 36. 
8 John v. 43. * Luke xv. 81. 

P 



226 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

might also go away, it was granted, with the 
goods of the father, and waste them. 

These explicit teachings show how fully the 
self, the individuality, the proprium, was recog- 
nized out of His own experience and through 
His unmatched enlightenment, by the Christ of 
God. 

2. RECIPIENCY AND REACTIVITY 

are no less fully recognized. Indeed, they are 
implied in the passages already quoted, for it 
everywhere appears that true or false steward- 
ship, the righteous use or the unrighteous abuse 
of gifts, is human life as seen by the Christ. 
Some other sayings will be quoted, however, 
which especially indicate man's recipiency. 

The question, " Shall He not clothe you ?" * 
implies man's recipient relation to God. "It 
shall be given you in that hour what ye shall 
speak" 2 teaches the same lesson. The parable 
of the sower 3 presents men receiving with much 
variety of capacity, as the field receives its seed 
with varying results which it cannot control, as 
man can. 



1 Matthew vi. 30. 2 Matthew x. 19. 

3 Matthew xiii., Mark iv., Luke viii. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 227 

The whole of what is said about prayer ex- 
presses the truth that man receives what he has ; 
that he is able to enlarge his capacity by conse- 
cration of his powers, and that his becoming 
attitude towards God is that of request and affec- 
tionate trust. " Give us this day our daily 
bread" l is the model supplication. " Give, and 
it shall be given unto you" 2 is the law of life. 
" Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye 
shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto 
you : for every one that asketh, receiveth ; and 
he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that 
knocketh, it shall be opened. If ye, being evil, 
know how to give good gifts to your children, 
how much more shall your Father which is 
in heaven give good things to them that ask 
Him ?" 3 And the value of prayer has its fullest 
statement in the words : " All things whatsoever 
ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall re- 
ceive," 4 which words are interpreted by the 
other saying : " If ye abide in me, and my words 
abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall 
be done unto you." 5 



1 Matthew vi. 5. 2 Luke vi. 38. 3 Matthew vii. 7, 8, 11. 
4 Matthew xxi. 22. 5 John xv. 7. 



228 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

A remarkable evidence of the recognition of 
human recipiency by the Christ is found in the 
frequent use of the proverbial phrase, " He that 
hath ears to hear, let him hear," l or, as it is said 
in one place, " He that is able to receive it, let 
him receive it;" 2 plainly indicating that every 
man has not only his inherited measure given 
him in his creation, but that he makes that 
measure larger or smaller by his own use of it 
in life. 

So He spoke of receiving the kingdom of God, 
saying, that unless one received it as a little 
child, he could not enter therein ; 3 and to a 
man making surrender of his selfish interests 
for the sake of God's service, He promised that 
he should " receive manifold more in this time, 
and in the world to come eternal life." 4 

When our Lord spoke of good deeds as 
"wrought in God," 5 He did not ignore man's 
reactive free-agency, but He showed that the 
good deed is the unperverted exercise of the 
gifts of God. 

It was precisely this relation fully recognized 



1 Matthew xi. 15. 3 Matthew xix. 12. 

* Luke xviii. 17. * Ibid. 30. 6 John iii. 21. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 229 

which led the Christ to say, " I can of mine own 
self do nothing. I seek not mine own will, but 
the will of Him that sent me;" 1 for He felt 
within Himself a power bestowed for good, and 
He avoided all thought of perverting it by 
denying its source. 

" I give unto them eternal life," 2 He said of 
those who followed Him, meaning that as "in 
Him was life," so by Him it was communicated 
in rich measure to those who would prepare 
themselves to receive it. "I am come that they 
may have life," He said, " and may have it 
abundantly." 3 And this interprets the words 
which ignorance, having no living experience of 
their truth, is apt to regard as mysterious : 
" Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and 
drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves. 
He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood 
hath eternal life. He that eateth Me he also 
shall live because of Me." 4 

Similarly, in the parable of the talents, it was 
said that the gift was "to each according to his 
several ability;" 5 and it is made plain in this 



1 John v. 30. 2 John x. 28. 3 John x. 10. 

* John vi. 53, 54, 57. 5 Matthew xxv. 15. 
20 



230 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

and in the parable of the pounds that no more 
was expected of any one than his nature and 
acquired abilities would warrant. 

This law is illustrated by the saying in respect 
to the Spirit of Truth : " Whom the world 
cannot receive, for it beholdeth Him not, neither 
knoweth Him ; ye know Him, for He abideth 
with you and shall be in you." * 

Thus does the fact of man's self as reactive 
and recipient stand forth everywhere in the 
teachings of the Christ. It is not necessary to 
follow any of these points into the apostolic 
teaching, but this fact is also conspicuous there, 
for example, in Paul's saying, " The natural 
man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of 
God ; for they are foolishness unto him." 2 

Passing to the subject of man's 

3. FREE-AGENCY, 

we note, as before, that this is implied in all that 
has been already quoted. The recipiency by the 
Christ of what was of God, and by man of what 
was of God in the Christ, is never spoken of as 
a passive, much less as a compelled, agency. 

1 John xiv. 17. 2 1 Corinthians ii. 14. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 231 

The servant takes the talent to be in his own 
keeping, and to do with it what he will, — this is 
always the view presented. In addition, how- 
ever, for the sake of greater defmiteness, some 
passages may be cited. 

Every command to sinful men to "repent" 
recognized their self-control, their ability to 
choose or to alter their course. Such commands 
as that they were to love their enemies, to do 
good to them who hated them, to resist not evil, 
to forgive seventy times seven times, to give no 
anxious thought to the morrow, to deny self, — 
all these and many others proposed a new way 
of life, and one of great difficulty, which they 
could pursue only by taking command of them- 
selves and insisting within themselves upon 
acting freely in spite of strong pressure of scorn 
without and of self-love within. They were thus 
not only regarded as free, but they were urged 
to demand a larger liberty, a kingship over 
themselves. 

When the Pharisees were warned that for 
every idle word they must give account, 1 the 
same meaning is conveyed. The man who sells 

1 Matthew xii. 36. 



232 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

all that he has and buys the precious field 1 ex- 
hibits his liberty. So is it with the man who 
might have had compassion on his fellow-ser- 
vant, but did not pity him. 2 So is it with the 
son who said, "I go and went not;" and with 
him who said, "I go not, but afterwards he re- 
pented himself and went." 3 So was it with 
those who received the invitation to the feast, 
but " made light of it," and " would not come," 
and " went their ways." 4 So was it with those 
whom the Lord would have gathered, but to 
whom He must say in truth, "And ye would 
not." 6 

It is noticeable throughout that the freedom 
of man is as distinctly recognized in his relation 
to God as in his relation with men. The Christ 
said to the Pharisees, "Ye tithe mint and rue 
and every herb, and pass over judgment, and 
the love of God; but these ought ye to have 
done, and not to leave the other undone." 6 He 
predicted that they were so hardened that they 
would refuse to accept any evidence of their 
own depravity: "If they hear not Moses and 



1 Matt. xiii. 44. 2 Matt, xviii. 33. 3 Matt. xxi. 29 

4 Matt. xxii. 3, 5. 5 Matt, xxiii. 37. 6 Luke xi. 42. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 233 

the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, if 
one rise from the dead." 1 In a similar strain 
He spoke of those who " loved darkness rather 
than light; for their works were evil." 2 

The custom of the Christ to ask one what he 
would have, before exercising His beneficent 
power upon him, should not be overlooked, for 
it was a needless question in itself to address to 
a blind or sick man ; but it was always asked, or 
the equivalent of its answer was always de- 
manded, — " What wilt thou that I should do 
unto thee?" "Wilt thou be made whole?" 
Had a negative answer been given, He must 
have passed on, as He passed neglected among 
Pharisees or scribes. 

An important passage is that which was spoken 
when, at the last, He confided many thoughts to 
the disciples, saying, " No longer do I call you 
servants ; for the servant knoweth not what his 
lord doeth; but I have called you friends;" 3 
meaning that they were to rise above the inferior 
liberty of obeying or disobeying to that of par 
ticipation in the plan of their master. 

Another word of the Christ, not in the gospels, 



1 Luke xtL 31. 2 John iii. 19. 3 John xv. 15. 

20* 



234 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

must be cited because it so perfectly expresses 
the free agency of man: "Behold, I stand at 
the door and knock ; if any man hear my voice 
and open the door, I will come in to him, and 
will sup with him, and he with Me." l 

As to the 

4. division op man's powers, 
it may be enough to note that, in all the teach- 
ings which have been quoted, the will of man 
with its loves is constantly dwelt upon and the 
intellect of man is constantly instructed; that, 
in fact, the appeal is always to man's love 
through his intellect; but that the feelings are 
in no case recognized as of equal importance. 
It is very true that joy and sorrow are spoken 
of, and that, in His last words, the Christ speaks 
of His joy to be fulfilled in the disciples; 2 but 
it is easily seen that it is the peace from work 
well performed that was enjoyed in that hour of 
danger, the joy of the will which had sought 
and did seek the lost sheep, and of the un- 
derstanding which discerned the way to final 
triumph. 

The law that 

1 Kevelation iii. 20. 

2 As in John xv. 11 ; xvi. 20-24; xvii. 13. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 235 

5. USE IS THE DESIGN 

of the self, which destiny it accepts or rejects, is 
everywhere set forth. The whole example of 
the Christ indicated this sole aim. It is found 
in all His words. He said, " Whosoever would 
become great among you shall be your minister ; 
and whosoever would be first among you shall 
be your servant ; even as the Son of Man came 
not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and 
to give His life a ransom for many." 1 And 
again He said, " He that is greatest among you 
shall be your servant." 2 

He taught them that the talents must be 
traded with. He showed them that the Sabbath 
was not made for idleness when good deeds 
could be done. He likened Himself to a shep- 
herd whose whole thought is for his sheep. 
" My Father worketh even until now," 3 He said 
to the indolent class of His day, "and I work." 
" I must work the works of Him that sent me, 
while it is day," 4 He said. 

A striking saying was that in which He drew 
the picture of the servant coming in from the 

1 Matthew xx. 26-28 ; Mark x. 43-45. 2 Matt, xxiii. 11. 

3 John v. 17. * John ix. 3. 



236 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

field, and not demanding to be served, but wait- 
ing upon his master : " Even so ye also, when ye 
have done all the things which are commanded 
you, say, "We are unprofitable servants, we 
have done that which it was our duty to do." 1 
This saying is at one with the words, " Freely ye 
received, freely give." 2 

Such was always His principle of conduct: 
" Be ye perfect," 3 was His injunction. " If thou 
wouldest be perfect," 4 was His address to the 
young man who was boasting his righteousness, 
as He showed him how much remained to be 
done. His golden rule, as it is justly called, is 
an ethical standard, which is not extravagant, 
calling upon men to forget themselves, but 
which is perfect wisdom in its requirement that 
they should remember others with equal care. 
And this is the law and the prophets also. 5 

The Christ was equally clear in what He 
said of 

6. EVIL IN MAN. 

He plainly taught its source when, standing in 
the court of the temple, He charged the priests 



1 Luke xvii. 10. 2 Matthew x. 8. 3 Matthew v. 48. 

4 Matthew xix. 21. 5 Matthew vii. 12. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 237 

with the crime of polluting it : " Ye have made 
it a den of robbers." l Here was no room for 
doubt as to the cause of the evil which had made 
its way into the high places of Judaism. And 
from this one may conclude as to all evil. But 
it is even more plainly declared in the long 
series of woes which He denounced to the hypo- 
crites, who would not go into the kingdom of 
God and would not let others go in, who made 
proselytes and rendered them children of hell, 
who quibbled about oaths and were liars, who 
strained out the gnat and swallowed the camel, 
who cleansed the outside of the cup but filled it 
full of extortion and excess, who whitened them- 
selves outwardly like sepulchres but were black 
and foul with iniquity within, who had slain 
the prophets and who must bear the burden of 
their deeds. 2 

There is no evil in the talent, and there is 
none given to him who receives it; he himself 
creates the evil by misusing the talent, and is 
therefore judged out of his own mouth. 3 

The wretched fate of the betrayer was that of 

1 Matthew xxi. 13 ; Mark xi. 17 ; Luke xix. 46. 
9 Matthew xxiii. 3 Luke xix. 22. 



238 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

his own devising. He was caught in the net 
which he had made. He betrayed himself to 
his own destruction. " See thou to that." 1 

"When our Lord said that from him who had 
not should be taken even that which he seemed 
to have, 2 He meant that, sooner or later, the 
wilful abuse of possession would bring posses- 
sion to an end. 

And this leads to the thought of the control 
of evil, which control, by successful resistance to 
its continued assaults, He gained, and which He 
would have others gain by resisting evil for 
themselves with His aid. Not only the embodi- 
ments of evil in priest and scribe opposed Him, 
but even more the people of the other world 
who were in complete possession of some in this 
life. It is no fancy that He contended with evil 
spirits, and no delusion of an ignorant time. 
Spiritism has confirmed the record. Possession 
is still known, under the form of " control." 3 
But the mischievous ones who now torment 
a mediumistic victim are nothing to those 
" legions" 4 of the day of Herod and Caiaphas. 

1 Luke xxvii. 4. a Luke viii. 18. 

s New Psychology, vol. i. pp. 228, 394. 4 Luke viii. 30. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 239 

Before the attack of such as He contended with, 
the Christ bowed in the garden of Gethsemane, 
and His sweat of blood made record of His 
agony. 

It was a contest of Person against persons, of 
one self against many ; yet the many yielded once 
and again till every plant which the heavenly 
Father had not planted was rooted up, as was 
predicted. 1 Yet this kind of enemy was not 
conquered without " prayer and fasting." 2 The 
life of the Christ was a contest. The contest 
was between Him and all the human foes of 
God. In His victory He led captivity captive, 
and the prince of this world was cast out. 
Henceforward evil was limited by the power of 
the Christ as it had not been limited before, and 
it still is and forever will be limited by Him; 
not prevented from arising in any perverse will, 
but issuing only as permitted for possible good. 

7. MAN THE IMAGE OF GOD 

was an essential principle of Judaism and was 
taken for granted in all the teachings of the 
Christ, and distinctly uttered in the oft-repeated 
phrase, "Your rather," in the instruction to 

1 Matthew xv. 13. a Matt. xvii. 21. 



240 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

open prayers with " Our Father," and in the 
words to Mary Magdalene, " My Father and 
your Father." " Ye therefore shall be perfect 
as your heavenly Father is perfect" ! admits of 
no other interpretation. " Blessed are the peace- 
makers, for they shall be called sons of God" 2 
marks the use of the term to designate those 
who were sons of God not merely in view of 
their origin, but in conscious relation of filial 
affection. " The children of God that are scat- 
tered abroad" 3 was the designation of the people 
needing help. 

In a marked manner the idea of man made in 
God's image appears in all that was said as to a 
new birth, a regeneration, by which a new nature 
took and takes the place of the old, and a puri- 
fied selfhood is obtained. "But as many as 
received Him, to them gave He the right to 
become children of God ; which were born not 
of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the 
will of man, but of God." 4 

It would not be out of place here to remark 
that, though 



1 Matthew v. 48. 2 Matthew v. 9. 

» John xi. 52. « John i. 13. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 241 

8. MAN AS MICROCOSM 

is nowhere distinctly presented, for the words of 
the Christ were always addressed to the practical 
aspects of life, yet that His teaching is full of 
indirect evidence of this great fact. To form some 
idea of what is meant one need only recall the 
constant use of all nature as representative of 
man and the absolutely perfect recognition that 
every visible object and act was significant of 
human life in some way. A mere enumeration 
of some of the objects employed will be suffi- 
cient. Without pausing to give references, we 
note: childhood, youth, old age, king, prince, 
noble, beggar, poor, physician, priest, shepherd, 
bridegroom, bride, fisherman, judge, virgin, ser- 
vant, thief, heir, hypocrite, adversary, traveller, 
childbirth ; sowing, reaping, watching, sleeping, 
marriage, hireling, health, sickness, war, famine, 
dancing, weeping, purging, buying, selling, pay- 
ing; eyes, ears, hair, hand, head, foot, mouth, 
cheek, face, lip, voice, belly, heart, blood, 
shoulder, loins, finger, hunger, thirst, dinner, 
supper ; cattle, ass, sheep, lamb, goat, dog, wolf, 
calf, fox, fish, worm, hen, dove, eagle, sparrow, 
raven, serpent; tree, fruit, root, harvest, field, 

ground, vine, grass, thorns, reed, vineyard, mar- 
L q 21 



242 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

ket-place, grapes, seed, lily, water, salt, bread, 
leaven, wine, oil, wheat, tares, fig; sand, earth, 
hill, earthquake, sepulchre, light, darkness, rock, 
wind, sky, sun, moon, star, rain, cloud, east, 
west; house, chamber, closet, gate, mill, throne, 
crown, seat, beam, mote, altar, door, prison, 
tower, barn, fold, cross ; lamp, cup, candle, 
bushel, sickle, needle, plough, yoke, bag, bottle, 
pitcher, bed, purse, girdle, linen, napkin, coat, 
cloak, hem, pipe, net; treasure, tribute, wages, 
talent, pound, pearls, gold, silver, bank, debt, 
account, alms, burden, snare, sword, furnace, 
stumbling-block, lightning, fire. 

This enumeration, without further and more 
full examples of the Christ's usage of symbols, 
may indicate that, to Him, the environment was 
transparent with a meaning, a correspondence 
with humanity, which all poets have seen to 
some degree, or there had been no poetry, but 
which has its perfect exemplification in the 
sayings of the Light of the World. 

9. THE DIVINE 

was fully revealed, as has been remarked, in the 
Christ. It was also described in His words. It 
was set forth as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 243 

which terms have been treated of as exemplified 
in man's will, intellect, and outgoing activity of 
life. When He commanded His disciples to 
baptize in this threefold name, they understood 
Him, and rightly, that they were to think of all 
three as in Him; and they baptized "in the 
name of the Lord Jesus." God is the father of 
man, God is a spirit, there is none good but One, 
— these are the expressions which lead the 
thought to turn to God, not as a " stream of 
tendency," not merely as the Unknowable, but as 
Person. His love is declared in such teachings 
as, — " It is not the will of your Father who is in 
heaven that one of these little ones should 
perish." * His infinite intelligence, knowing no 
bound in time or space, is evident in the predic- 
tions of which Palestine is to-day the unmis- 
takable fulfilment. His power, the power of 
wisdom full of love, is manifest in all the works 
of the Christ, and in the endurance and growth 
of Christianity. 

When the Divine would reveal itself for the 
succor of man, near destruction of all that was 
above the brute in him, and when, with infinite 

1 Matthew xviii. 14. 



244 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

patience and skill, the Divine would apply itself 
to the task of subduing without destroying evil 
men and evil spirits, it is most important to 
notice that God made His 

10. ADVENT BY MAN; 

that He was incarnated in human nature as His 
appropriate manifestation. The Christ came in 
the name of Jehovah ; He declared the God 
whose voice had not been heard, whose shape 
had not been seen ; in Him God was glorified 
and did glorify Himself; * He was before Abra- 
ham, 2 and, having conquered, ascended up where 
He was before; 3 he that hated Him hated the 
Father also ; 4 he that had seen him had seen the 
Father ; 5 he that received Him received Him 
that sent Him ; 6 therefore, when triumphant, He 
had all power in heaven and on earth. 7 He was 
the bread of God that had come down from 
heaven to give life unto the world. 8 The help- 
less infant of Bethlehem was only in a faint 
degree, only potentially, God manifest ; the per- 
fected Christ, forgiving all, knowing all, working 

1 John xiii. 31, 32. 2 John viii. 58. 8 John vi. 62. 
* John xv. 23. 6 John xiv. 9. 6 Matt. x. 40. 

7 Matt, xxviii. 18. 8 John vi. 41. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 245 

wonders of Divine energy, was one with the 
Father, the Christ of God. 

These expressions from the words of the 
Christ may suffice to bring the fact to plain view 
that God is infinitely Human, not such a being 
as the Jews worshipped in the desert, deeming 
Him kind to their nation only, nor such as be- 
nighted Christians have worshipped, deeming 
Him angry and appeasable with their tortures 
or their gifts, but so perfectly Human that He is 
the One, the " I am that I am," the Alpha and 
the Omega of being. 

11. THE IMMORTALITY OF MAN 

is as clearly indicated as possible in the sayings 
of the Christ, but it is an immortality of Divine 
gift. Men had sunk so low that the full faith in 
future life characteristic of more ancient time 
was lost to view, and only later generations have 
brought it to light as they learned to decipher 
hieroglyphic or cuneiform records. The Sad- 
ducees doubted resurrection. The Pharisees 
regarded it as the exclusive privilege of their 
sect of that nation, and they held it to be a re- 
vival of life after long delay and a restoration of 

the physical body. They buried their dead near 
21* 



246 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

to Jerusalem in order not to be overlooked at 
the last day, or put a handful of Jerusalem dirt 
into the grave, if remote, to effect its upheaval. 

To all this came the words of the Christ like 
the dawn to the night. His first words were a 
proclamation of immortality : "Blessed are the 
poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of 
heaven ; blessed are the pure in heart, for they 
shall see God; rejoice and be exceeding glad, 
for great is your reward in heaven." x He spoke 
of laying up treasures in heaven. 2 He said that 
he who endured to the end would be saved. 3 
He told much of the angels in heaven to whom 
the risen righteous would be equal. 4 He spoke 
of eternal and everlasting life. He declared the 
Father's house to be of many mansions. 5 

More than this, He convinced the Sadducees by 
bidding them know that all the dead were living 
with God, who was not a God of dead men, but 
of living. 6 He taught Martha of Bethany that 
He was Himself resurrection and life. 7 To the 
dying thief He promised paradise that day. 8 



1 Matt. v. 3, 8, 12. 2 Matt. vi. 20. 3 Matt. x. 22. 

* Luke xx. 36. 5 John xiv. 2. « Matt. xxii. 32. 

7 John xi. 25. 8 Luke xxiii. 43. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 247 

The eternal life of righteous co-operation with 
God was much treated of: "There is no man 
that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or 
mother, or father, or children, or lands, for my 
sake and for the gospel's sake, but he shall re- 
ceive a hundredfold now in this time, houses, 
and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and chil- 
dren, and lands, with persecutions; and in the 
world to come, eternal life." 1 The wicked were 
not to be annihilated, but their future He de- 
scribed in terms of sorrow. 

His own resurrection lifted the disciples out 
of despair, and made them meet death calmly, 
saying, " To live is Christ, to die is gain." 2 
Peter spoke of the "inheritance incorruptible, 
and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, re- 
served in heaven." 3 John wrote of "the 
promise which He hath promised us, even life 
eternal." 4 

In His closing words our Lord manifested 
His own approaching victory over evil and the 
grave, and assured His disciples of every age 
that the other world was a real world, and that 



1 Mark x. 29, 30. 2 Philippians i. 21. 

8 1 Peter i. 4. * 1 John ii. 25. 



248 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

He would prepare a place for them, that they 
might be with Him in the Father's house, and 
go no more out. 1 

It is important to note that the Christian 
system recognizes three grand divisions of life, 
namely, 

12. GOD, SPIRIT, MATTER, 

and that one of these is no more distinctly pre- 
sented than the other. The prayer in Gethsem- 
ane reveals God in Divine love prompting the 
utmost patience in suffering for the sake of re- 
deeming man, the spirit or burdened mind of 
the Christ " willing" to do all the Divine pur- 
pose, and the flesh which was " weak" and in 
agony. More distinctly perhaps this threefold 
division of all being is seen in several parables, 
where the lord of the vineyard, the householder, 
or the father, represents the Divine, the steward 
or laborers or husbandmen or servants represent 
the spiritual, and the pounds or talents or goods 
represent the material. It will be found upon 
reflection that God, spirit, and matter are con- 
stantly in view in the gospels, and that they are 
spoken of in relation. 

1 John xiv. 3 ; Revelation iii. 12. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 249 

13. THE VITAL INFLUENCE 

is the influence of God upon spirit and through 
spirit in the inhabitants of heaven and in the 
mind of man upon matter. It is a movement 
of life and a circulation of force downward in 
the scale of being, and it is responded to by the 
reactivity of the recipient. When the body, 
which is matter, loses its connection with the 
spirit or mind or essential man, it dies and re- 
turns to its dust. When the spirit in its un- 
faithfulness closes itself to the life from above, 
its power for good lessens. In so far as it opens 
itself to that influence by prayerful activity, it 
lives with eternal vigor. It is an influence which 
man controls so far as the use to which he devotes 
it is concerned ; that he cannot utterly cut off his 
connection with the source of life is the Christian 

teaching. 

14. MIRACLES, 

which have been a stumbling-block to those who 
rightly refuse to regard them as arbitrary in- 
fractions of law, Divine or natural, are intelligi- 
ble enough in view of this vital connection, or 
constant transmission of life, or perpetual crea- 
tion. A miracle wrought by human power is im- 
possible, and so is one wrought by material force ; 



250 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

but a coming forth of the Divine life manifesting 
its quality is not a miracle, that is, a mere wonder, 
but a sign, as the Greek ayfielov means, and as 
the revisers have rendered it. A marked sign 
of Divine power, not annulling law, but quicken- 
ing it, bringing for the time heavenly phenomena 
to view upon earth, is the normal accompaniment 
of the Christ, but at the same time let it be 
noticed that He did not do such works for the 
unbelieving or those who checked the inflowing 
energy. 

Thus His presence brought forth from the evil 
spirits their ready submission, and even entreaty 
that He would suffer them to go into swine 
rather than compel them to retire to their own 
place ; but nothing of the sort would have oc- 
curred if He had not resisted His own tempters, 
thereby achieving by orderly methods the subju- 
gation of the evil. The miracle is, therefore, in 
the faithfulness of the Christ ; with this proved, 
the casting out of the devils, however impossible 
to others in their doubts, was certain to follow 
His command. 

In the case of disease, the hand upon the head 
or eyes put into effect the thought, " I will, be 
thou clean ;" and leprosy was cleansed, and 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 251 

blind eyes opened, and palsied arms strength- 
ened. But He gave charge that the patient 
should sin no more lest a worse thing should 
come to him, 1 because all the time the man was 
a free agent, had been healed only through his 
wish to be made whole, and had retained liberty 
to involve himself in worse evils. 

In feeding a multitude with a few loaves and 
fishes, the Christ could have done nothing if His 
love had not gone out to the people, material- 
izing itself as it went; so that the loaves were 
the form of His " compassion." It should be 
remembered, in connection with this very event, 
that He said, " It is the spirit that quickeneth : 
the flesh profiteth nothing." 2 And He gave the 
clew to the source of His power when He said 
to the tempter that man must not live by bread 
alone. 3 

This power of the self over its benefits re- 
ceived from above was constantly illustrated by 
the use of the words, " Thy faith hath saved 
thee," " According to thy faith be it unto thee ;" 
for the people referred to had received just that 
which they had prepared themselves to receive, 

1 John v. 14. 2 John vi. 63. 8 Luke iv. 4. 



252 THE BUM AN AND ITS 

and the blessing had been awaiting their desire 
to receive it when the Christ was nigh. 

The forgiveness of sins depended upon a simi- 
lar state of the recipient. Active repentance 
secured healing of the nature, — that is, the re- 
mission of the power of evil; but the opposite 
state had no forgiveness. " Her sins, which are 
many, are forgiven; for she loved much." 1 A 
sin which had no forgiveness 2 was spoken of, 
and this language has caused much disquiet 
among Christians. Its meaning was explained 
at the time of utterance to be that one may so 
" sin against the Holy Spirit," so determinedly 
oppose the voice of conscience in his soul, that 
he actually and permanently stifles it and does 
himself a lasting injury. 

These signs of the connection of God, spirit, 
and matter were not wrought to astonish people, 
much less to gain approval and applause for the 
meek and lowly One, but were the outcome of 
His presence wherever need was and wherever 
the wish to be helped was found. And these 
signs in their spiritual efficacy may be wrought 
again, and must be wrought if the Christ is to 

1 Luke vii. 47. a Mark iii. 29. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 253 

be more than a historic figure, even the Saviour 
of men from all unworthiness. Belief in Him 
cannot be transferred from one to another : it 
must be the fruit of one's own experience with 
the Christ, not an experience merely with those 
called Christians, but an experience with the 
Christ Himself, establishing a relation between 
the human self and the Divine Self, a relation in 
which the recipient, free in his reactivity, eter- 
nally assured of his own life and place in the com- 
monwealth of uses, abides in the Christ and the 
Christ in him, so that they, God in the Christ 
and the Christ in men, are made perfect in one. 1 

1 John xvii. 23. 



254 THE HUMAN AND ITS 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE KNOWABLE. 

A few concluding pages may not be out of 
place by way of anticipating the objection that 
the writer has passed, or has attempted to pass, 
from the firm ground of consciousness to that of 
mere belief, and has disregarded the spirit of 
the age, which is above all things critical, and 
which does not so much ask " What do you 
know?" as "How is such reputed knowledge 
possible ?" It is said of Kenan that he praised 
Spinoza by saying that " he could not accept 
Christianity, for he could not surrender his lib- 
erty, since Descartes was his master." * This, if 
so spoken, was only another and a needlessly 
deistical way of stating the same unwillingness 
to be led by aught but reason, which made 
Dante declare, " Aristotle is the master of those 
who know." 

1 Quoted by E. S. Phelps in The Struggle for Immortality : 
Boston, 1889, p. 13. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 255 

Especially since Kant is it impossible to con- 
found knowledge with assumption without in- 
stant detection. His strongest claim on the 
respect of posterity is the revolution which he 
made by the introduction of criticism into phi- 
losophy. Descartes had attempted this and had 
honestly freed his mind of its prepossessions, 
but had immediately readmitted without chal- 
lenge such ideas as seemed to him " clear and 
distinct." Before him Hobbes and after him 
Hume had carried the questioning spirit on to 
scepticism. It was Kant who led philosophy 
back to more positive ground. He avoided the 
Scylla of a credulous scholasticism and the 
Charybdis of an equally unfruitful scepticism, 
and safely made his way where every wise pilot 
will be careful to follow. His minor tenets may 
be but stepping-stones to higher views, but his 
principle of criticism as a substitute for dogma- 
tism, whether scholastic or sceptical, is impreg- 
nable. There can be no more scanning of the 
surface of the field of knowledge with affirma- 
tion or denial according to the onlooker's real or 
fancied powers of vision, but men must now sink 
their shafts and learn what lies below the surface. 
There shall be no more descriptions of the tree 



256 TEE HUMAN AND ITS 

of knowledge, but men must tell us how its roots 
are placed. Gnosticism in the second century 
thought that it knew everything about thirty 
ranks of gods ; 1 and, as the natural consequence, 
there were atheists in plenty then. Now, in 
place of mere denial, we have criticism, which 
asks, " How do you know ?" Seeing Q. E. D. at 
the end of an argument, men do not ask for the 
figure of the syllogism but for the foundation of 
the premises. 

Such a change in the state of the public mind 
necessarily involves much questioning of his- 
torical beliefs, both philosophical and theological. 
The scientist who lately said that he attended 
church till he could no longer endure the re- 
peated declaration by the clergyman of a faith 
which certainly was not in any sense knowledge 
illustrated the common feeling. In its reluc- 
tance to submit its creeds to criticism and re- 
vision, the church has been unintentionally a 
" stone of stumbling" to many, and has caused 
them the suffering of being drawn in one direc- 
tion by reason and in another by respect for a 
traditional faith. A new spirit, however, begins 

1 Yalentinus. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 257 

to be found and to utter itself courageously. 
Men begin to obey the wise saying of Confucius : 
"When you know a thing, to hold that you 
know it; and when you do not know a thing, 
to allow that you do not know it; this is 
knowledge." l 

It has already been suggested that man's self- 
knowledge is a knowledge of himself as spir- 
itual, — that is to say, of the sensations and ideas 
which, whatever their source, present them- 
selves to his mind as immaterial. The ground 
of the idealist is perfectly firm as to the ability 
of the mind to have immediate knowledge only 
of its ideas. The argument of Johnson kicking 
the stone is out of date. There can be no ques- 
tion about the dictum of Plato that the mind 
proceeds from ideas through ideas to ideas. 
Locke expanded this into the remark, " Since 
the mind, in all its thoughts and reasonings, 
hath no other immediate object but its own 
ideas, which it alone does or can contemplate, it 
is evident that our knowledge is only conversant 
about them." 2 



1 Analects, Book I. chap. iv. 

2 Human Understanding, Book II. chap iv. n. 1. 

r 22* 



258 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

Spirit, then, it may be taken for granted, is 
knowable in the ideas presented to the mind, — 
that is, it is known if man knows anything. 

" Kerumque ignarus imagine gaudet." x 
r 

"I know by seeing and hearing," said Locke 
again, " that there is some corporeal being out- 
side of me ; I do more certainly know that there 
is some spiritual being within me that sees and 
hears." 2 

To materialists this statement may seem an 
inversion of the truth, for they may hold that 
man knows himself only as a body or material 
organism, the brain secreting thought as the 
liver secretes bile (Professor Huxley), but there 
is no ground for such a comparison, since the 
bile has its limited physical field, while the 
thought is by no means limited to the brain or 
body. It is no parasitic Anchises riding in his 
shrivelled helplessness on the back of pious 
-^Eneas, but it may say of itself, — 

" I have flown on the winds through the vaulted sky, 
In a path unseen by the vulture's eye ; 



1 ^Eneid., viii. 730. 

5 Ibid., Book II. chap, xxiii. sect. 15. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 259 

I have "been where the lion's whelps ne'er trod, 

And nature is mute in the sight of God ; 

I have girdled the earth in my airy flight, 

I have wandered alone 'mid yon spheres of light." 1 

In regard to our knowledge of matter, it is 
granted at once that we cannot mentally go to it 
and have immediate knowledge of it as we have 
of spirit. Indeed, to attempt this would be to 
surrender the vantage-ground of the spirit's in- 
termediate position between the two other ob- 
jects of desired knowledge, namely, matter and 
the Divine. Kant was unquestionably right 
when he placed the things in themselves outside 
of the field of consciousness and limited our 
knowledge to that of the phenomena. In de- 
claring the noumena to be in themselves unknow- 
able he wisely followed Aristotle, who had said, 
H uXrj ayvuxTToq xaff auri^, Matter in itself is un- 
knowable. 2 

Admitting, then, that the mind has no imme- 
diate dealing with matter, are we shut up to 
eternal ignorance of the outer world ? It is by 
some said that Kant should have been so con- 
sistent with himself as to reject the things in 

1 Henry Smith, Thought. 3 Metaph., vii. (vi.), chap. x. 



260 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

themselves and to hold a purely idealistic ground ; 
but there is some reason to doubt the positions 
taken by those who came after him in this re- 
spect ; and this for the simple reason that a purely 
subjective idealism, unfruitful of any knowledge 
of aught above or aught below itself, is as unsat- 
isfactory in its way as Spinozism, which finds its 
single ground in the Divine and ignores both 
spirit and matter; or again as materialism, which 
ignores everything above its plane, whether 
finitely spiritual or absolutely Divine. We must 
hold Kant to be consistent when he says, " Be- 
hind phenomena are things in themselves which, 
though hidden, are the conditions of phenomena. 1 
. . . The conception of noumena is not only possi- 
ble, but necessary. 2 . . . By means of practical 
postulates we learn that there are objects corre- 
sponding to ideas." 3 

If, then, matter cannot be ignored without 
turning our ideas into phantasies, and if never- 
theless it is impossible to know matter immedi- 
ately, how can we know it ? The answer is, of 
course, that we know it through our sensations 

1 Pure Keason, p. 307. 2 Practical Reason, p. 46. 

" Page 141. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 261 

which come over a wire, as it were, at one end 
of which the mind is and at the other that which 
originates the sensation, namely, the body. This 
is common philosophical ground. For example, 
in Walter's " Perception of Space and Matter" 
we read, "By ordinary inference from ideas, 
sensations, and perceptions we are able to gain 
a trustworthy knowledge of matter. In the 
muscular sense something resists our volition. 
Touch gives magnitude." 1 Bain says in his 
" Senses and Intellect," " The sum total of all 
the occasions for putting forth active energy, or 
for conceiving this as possible to be put forth, is 
an external world. This leads us to form to our- 
selves an abstraction that comprehends all our 
experience, past and present, and all the experi- 
ence of others, which abstraction is the utmost 
that our minds can attain to respecting an ex- 
ternal or material world." 2 Bascom, with equal 
care, speaks thus in his " Science of Mind," 
" What the mind directly knows must be purely 
mental, what it indirectly knows are the phe- 
nomena interpreted by its own experience. Did 
not perception constantly involve inference, per- 

* Boston, 1879, p. 405. 2 New York, 1879, p. 377. 



262 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

ception and consciousness would give but one 
and the same set of data, and the distinction 
would disappear." x 

Thus it would appear that by an inference, 
which it would be insanity not to make, the 
material world is known, of course most inti- 
mately by every one in his own body, and less in- 
timately, but not less accurately, in other forms. 
All scientific knowledge is immediately of ideas 
alone, but infer entially and accurately of beasts 
and trees and rocks. 

If it be granted that nescience as to the mate- 
rial world is irrational, and that matter is indeed 
knowable, a brief survey of our possible knowl- 
edge of the Divine may next be made. 

No one will deny that we can know another, 
for example, a near friend from whom we derive 
information and in whose companionship we find 
joy. The ideas which come to us by hearing 
while our eyes are looking upon a beloved face 
never bring with them any doubt of the reality 
of the friend unless we have previous reason for 
indulging a temporary doubt of the healthful 
working of our organs. "When a man says that 

1 New York, 1881, p. 113. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 263 

he knows another, he means that by experience 
he has been made certain of his existence, has 
at first perceived him only externally, but has 
gradually been made aware of the emotions and 
thoughts of his friend, who has not only con- 
vinced him thus of his possession of a distinct 
personality, but has also displayed that similarity 
of purpose or sympathetic quality of heart which 
has made the two one in a real sense. Pythago- 
ras defined friendship as one soul in two bodies. 
They are, of course, not one, but at one. 

This knowledge of another is as trustworthy 
as the knowledge of one's own body, and is even 
more easy to gain than a knowledge of matter 
in general, because the other, being a spirit, is 
on the same plane of life. With our eyes of 
flesh we see only the friend's body, but we may 
know him as to his spirit much more thoroughly 
than we know his body. Indeed, we may never 
have seen the general of our army or the presi- 
dent of our nation, and yet we may have come 
to know this one or that by other means suffi- 
ciently to put a rational trust in the honesty, or to 
feel a well-grounded distrust in the dishonesty 
or incapacity, of general or president. 

!Now, if we are to know the Divine at all, it 



264 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

must be as another whom we have not seen in 
His person. Knowledge of the Divine is more 
than an inference as to its existence. It is more 
than an examination of the arguments which 
were reviewed above in their own place. We 
may conclude that there is every reason for be- 
lieving that Washington did exist or that Glad- 
stone does exist without having any knowledge 
of them except remotely and partially ; but if 
we are to know God or man sufficiently to justify 
the use of the word knowledge, we must have 
some relation with them. Experience must 
enter into the acquaintance. We must know 
" not because of thy saying," l as the Samaritans 
said to the woman, but must know actually, 
rationally, indisputably. 

We certainly cannot know God in His un- 
manifested infinity ; of that which so far tran- 
scends us we can only use negative terms, — 

" Being above all beings ! Mighty One 

"Whom none can comprehend and none explore ! 

"Who fill'st existence with thyself alone, — 
Embracing all, supporting, ruling o'er, — 
Being whom we call God and know no more I 

And thought is lost ere thought can soar so high, 

Even like past moments in eternity." 2 

1 John iv. 42. 2 Derzhavin. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 265 

But this impossibility of adequately conceiving 
of the Divine should not lead men, as before 
remarked, to suppose that they can know in 
religion only rules of conduct. Even in the 
material world we find a limit beyond which it 
is too vast for us. But the scientist, knowing 
but little of the world, knows enough to affirm 
it and to claim acquaintance with it. Even with 
a friend it is not necessary to know everything 
of his secret thoughts before we can feel at one 
with him. It is not necessary to be as wise as 
God in order to know Him sufficiently and very 
much as a child knows its parent whose vastly 
greater wisdom it does not fathom. 

The boundlessness of the Divine qualities is no 
bar to our knowledge, if they be qualities lead- 
ing to friendship and not to aversion. To say, 
"Thou art great and doest wondrous things, 
Thou art God alone," l is not to confess inability 
to know Him with sufficient certainty, but rather 
to declare that the mind rests in a sense of its 
inferiority to Him as contentedly as in a sense of 
its superiority to the body. 

It is not only reasonable to conclude that the 



1 Psalm lxxxvi. 10. 
23 



266 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

God who made all things is most like the most 
perfect of His creations, namely, man ; but it is 
also easy to conclude that His capacity is such 
that He can make Himself known, and that He 
has in man the most adequate means of mani- 
festing Himself. A finite man would, to be sure, 
reveal God only in the very inadequate degree 
seen in Moses or Socrates ; but one of such an 
origin as the Christ might reveal Him fully, or 
with increasing fulness as He grew in grace, till 
at length the glorified Christ, with face as the 
sun, would reveal God as fully as man can ask. 
" All mine are thine and thine are mine." l 

Avoiding a repetition of what has been already 
said as to this manifestation, let me only meet 
the question, Can we know the Christ ? If He 
be known only historically we do not know 
Him, and thus do not know the Divine in any 
adequate sense. We may not doubt that the 
Gospel account is true, but to assent to it is not 
to know the Divine as we know ourselves, our 
friends, and the external world. 

In his " Oriental Christ" Mozoomdar gives 
this experience: "I sat near the large lake in 

1 John xvii. 10. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE. 267 

the Hindu College compound, in Calcutta. It 
was a week-day evening. I was meditating on 
the state of my soul, on the cure of all spiritual 
wretchedness, the brightness and peace unknown 
to me, which was the lot of God's children. I 
prayed and besought Heaven. Suddenly, it 
seemed to me, let me own, it was revealed to me, 
that close to me there was a holier, more blessed, 
more loving personality, upon which I might 
repose my troubled head. The response of my 
nature was unhesitating and immediate. Jesus, 
from that day, to me became a reality whereon I 
might lean." l 

Such was the experience of the Oriental, for 
no one can doubt that the account is truthful. 
Varied according to temperaments, it would be 
that of all those who can truly say that they 
know God in the Christ. The zealot, on his way 
to Damascus as a Jewish hater of Christians, was 
quickly convinced of his error, and could never 
thereafter doubt nor be " disobedient unto the 
heavenly vision." 2 The language of Thomas a 
Kempis is not extravagant : " All the glory and 



1 Published Boston, 1883, p. 11. 

2 Acts xxvi. 19. 



268 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

beauty of the Christ are manifested within . . . 
and the peace that He brings passeth all under- 
standing." 1 All the way down the Christian 
centuries there have been some who could say, 
even under threats of martyrdom, that they 
knew the Christ, and, though once called mystics 
with a degree of contempt, they have endured, 
and their numbers have increased. Natural re- 
ligion, with its general perception of the imma- 
nent God in nature, needs to have no scorn for 
that more intimate, even personal, relation which 
the Christ enables one to form with the Divine, — 
a relation unknown to idolatrous antiquity and 
unknown to Christian formalism, but definitely 
promised by the Christ, — " I am with you always : 2 
where two or three are gathered together in my 
name, there am I in the midst of them," 3 and 
so easily realized that a writer says with truth, 
" Christ never was more really in the world than 
He is now. He is as much to those who love 
Him and believe on Him as He was to the 
friends in Bethany. . . . We may form with 
Him an actual relation of personal friendship 



1 Imitation of Christ. 2 Matthew xxviii. 20. 

8 Matthew xviii. 20. 



RELATION TO TEE DIVINE. 269 

which will grow closer as the years go on, 
deepening with each new experience." ' 

The philosopher must remove himself from 
all that is irrational, whether it goes under the 
name ot Christian theology or otherwise, hut to 
regard the Christ as the greatest of all teachers 
is to bring the reason into the largest light and 
the fullest liberty, " the liberty of the glory of 
the children of God." 2 

" All knowledge is a gathering into one," said 
Priscianus, and these knowables, the spirit, the 
Christ, and the flesh, are not to be thought as 
three disjoined worlds, but as mutually related, 
reciprocally active, and finding their meeting 
point in that which is midway between the 
Divine and the material, namely, the spirit, the 
mind. It looks upward to its Lord in prayer 
and in service, it looks inward with the ability 
which man alone of all created forms of life 
possesses and which makes him a philosopher, 
and it looks downward and outward to the flesh 
and the world. In its relation to the Divine it 
finds the purposes of life, in its own intelligence 

1 Silent Tunes, by J. E. Miller, D.D., p. 23. 
2 Komans viii. 21. 

23* 



270 THE HUMAN AND ITS 

it finds the means of realizing those purposes, 
and in the outer world it produces from its pur- 
poses by the means or causes which the mind 
supplies the effects, which are words and deeds. 
So is humanity one from its Source to its out- 
mosts. The worlds of spirit and matter are one 
because they are the homes of men, and the 
Creator and created are one because both are 
human, the one absolutely such, the other finitely 
such; but here is no mystery, for the Word, 
which was with God and which was God, and by 
which all things were made, and in which was 
life, " was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of 
grace and truth." l " For of Him and through 
Him and unto Him are all things." 2 

" All human knowledge," says Morell, " rests 
upon the three notions of nature, man, and 
God." 3 And this is only repeating the great 
first note of Holy Scripture : " In the beginning 
God created the heavens and the earth ;" 4 for 
man, while he dwells upon the earth, is not in 
place if he be earthy, and in the heavens — that is, 
in a spiritual life — he is truly a man. "Knowl- 

1 John i. 1, 14. « Komans xi. 36. 

8 Modern Philosophy, ii. 466. * Genesis i. 1. 



RELATION TO THE DIVINE, 271 

edge," said Spencer, "is permanent conscious- 
ness." l Precisely, it is the permanent conscious- 
ness of the self in its relations upward and 
downward; it is a consciousness which is "a 
temple of the living God," 2 — " a house not made 
with hands, eternal in the heavens." 3 

" That we do know" is the distinct and per- 
manent self, its recipiency, its reagency, its free 
agency, its inheritance which affects but does 
not determine its acts, its trinal form, its rela- 
tions testifying of the Divine, its immortality, — 
aspects which are fully presented in the teach- 
ings of the Christ, — in whom we have certain 
knowledge of God and spirit and matter. When 
the Christ said to Mcodemus, " We speak that 
we do know and testify that we have seen," He 
used the plainest terms to declare what was 
known to Him, and what any man may know by 
the aid of the Christ Whose light lighteth every 
man that cometh into the world, and Who prom- 
ised that His disciples should know the truth. 



1 First Principles, p. 142. 3 2 Corinthians vi. 16. 

3 2 Corinthians v. 1. 



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